You can see the glass half full or empty .. the fact is without the HF ... smartsteem would not have been curating and that almost $8 upvote would not have arrived. To get that vote from them you would have needed to have bought a vote. Instead it arrived because they curated your post.

So, you are better off than you would have been. That is the reason the post was your 2nd best. I was not a supporter of the HF but there are some positives being seen and as much as you are not happy and wanted more. You are ahead of where you would have been. There is a couple of other votes there that I believe are the result of new curation efforts but they are not as certain as the smartsteem vote.

So let's take your 11.54-7.92 from Smartsteem and take 75% of the remainder -- you get 2.71.

How is your income less than half of pre-HF21 when pre-HF21 would have given you much less.

Now, having established that you did indeed get more than would have pre-HF21. There does seem to be something odd with the amount of Steem you received. Even though the reward is paid out based on a 3 day average, it appears that average would have needed to have been about 21cents and we know that is not the case.

I would suggest you ask one of the more technical witnesses like drakos or themarkymark to have a look at the payout and see if they can explain how it came out as it did.