Previously for you to Power Down your Steem Power, you would have to wait 2 years based on 104 Weekly Instalments in order for you to completely convert your VESTED STEEM to liquid STEEM. With update 0.16.0 it will only take 3 months, exactly 13 Weeks to conduct a full Power Down
Previous Version
-104 Weekly Installments
Hardfork 0.16.0
-13 Weekly Installments
104-13=91
91/104 X 100 = 87.5%
That's a 87.5% Reduction in Time to conduct a full ''Power Down'', now you can withdraw your Vested STEEM within a 3 month period which a lot less time-consuming than having to wait 2 full years
Partial Implementation of #551 - update inflation rates, vesting withdraw and price feed period
There are some big changes to be included in the new Hardfork, such as the change to STEEM's Inflation Rate which determines how much STEEM will be minted throughout the year. Hence why STEEM is facing so much inflation, is primarily due to inflation & selling pressures, there is so much STEEM being distributed and people are selling their tokens for Profit. Banks Print Money, more each year and we don't exactly know how much but with STEEM being a blockchain, all the information is available to us! The fact that Steemit is build on top of STEEM allows developers to alter the Inflation of STEEM, however only if there is a general consensus among Steem Witnesses
New STEEM needs to be minted and distributed through Steemit.com, so there is a set of fixed instantaneous annual creation rate of 9.5% from all sources. Previously suggested by the Developer's is that STEEM should have an Annual inflation of 100% Rate.
Previous Inflation Rate was set at 160%, 148.5% of newly minted STEEM is to be paid to STEEM Power holders as sort of Interests, where as the remaining 16.5% of annual minted STEEM would be distributed out as rewards
At first it was intended that STEEM inflation is to be reduced to about 100% however Hardfork 0.16.0 will be setting annual creation rate to 9.5%. Inflation rate is set to go down to 9.5 percent, this was intended to reduce the growth rate of new STEEM supply
Currently about 16.5%, plus an additional 9 times that (148.5%) is paid to SP (which gets captured by the vesting fund but released as liquid STEEM later when SP holders power down) for a total STEEM inflation rate of about 160% (scheduled to reduce to about 100%). This would be changed to a total of 9.5% inflation instead of intended 100% Inflation Rate
This Big Update is announced here on GitHub
This is a Video made by 
STEEM prices has increase from 9-10 Cents to 16+ Cents on 27th November. A lot of Steem Witnesses are aware that the future amount of STEEM produced would be cut dramatically. Thus there are a lot of individuals buying STEEM at a cheap rate before newly minted supply of STEEM decreases and price rises due to demand & limited supply
STEEM Dollar is essentially STEEM however it creates a robust, counter-party free, pegged currency. Holding SBD pays interest and SBD should be convertible to $1.00 worth of STEEM. With the current version if you want to convert STEEM Dollar back to STEEM it would take a waiting period of 7 Day's, however with the new Hardfork 0.16.0 it will take 3.5 Days to complete a conversion. 50% less waiting time for you to convert STEEM Dollar to STEEM
Please Note that you can actually buy or sell STEEM & STEEM Dollar on the Internal Steemit Market, a platform that connects buyers & sellers. You can almost instantly convert STEEM to STEEM Dollar or Vice Versa.
10% of Newly Minted STEEM will be allocated to Steem Witnesses, in order to reward those who constantly provide support for the Steemit Project. Steem Witnesses are developers and individuals who keep a close eye on STEEM's blockchain and Steemit Infrastructure. Previously the Top 19 Witnesses are set to receive a higher amount of rewards, with Hardfork 0.16.0 there will more rewards for Runner Up Witnesses, to ensure that Steemit keep's attracting loyal individuals since there is a more balanced bounty reward given out
Steem Miners are set to receive more rewards from STEEM inflations, with the new Hardfork Miners will make the same per block as the top 19 witnesses to ensure that dedicated individuals are compensated for their contribution
Check it out on Github #551 pay miners and runner up witnesses 5x the top 19 per block produced
Steem Witnesses are rewarded with STEEM Power rather than STEEM or STEEM Dollar. Hardfork 0.16.0 was suppose to change this reward to STEEM however Developers have made up their mind to keep the payout in STEEM Power. Now that it takes only 3 months to Power down vested Steem (SP) it significantly improves witness liquidity, allowing Steem Witnesses to receive transferable STEEM quicker than previously intended. Also paying as Steem Power will prevent the need to manually power-up after every block as we believe most Witnesses should choose to Power Up
Besides there being a change to STEEM's inflation Rate, there is also a change in STEEM allocation. What i'm talking about here is about how Steemit allocates newly minted STEEM.
75% of inflation goes to authors and curators, a huge increase for Post Rewards and curators
Now that there is less annual STEEM tokens being minted, most of the STEEM will be distributed to Curators and Authors as a reward. Less STEEM will be going to STEEM Power holders, whereas most the reward will go to all new content being submitted on Steemit, while curators get a fair share of reward giving us more reason to upvote more Post
15% of inflation is allocated to STEEM Power
When new STEEM is minted, 15% will be allocated for the Vesting Fund as interest on STEEM Power
10% of inflation is allocated to STEEM Witnesses as a Reward
STEEM Witnesses will be paid for their contribution, Top 19 will receive most of the STEEM whereas the remaining is distributed to the other Steem Witnesses
Previously, of the new STEEM Created, Steem Power Holders get 90%, the other 10% get paid out in Contribution Rewards. There is huge change here, intended to reward contributors more whereas to reduce STEEM Power Holder payout. Those holding STEEM Power will receive a fair share of the 15% STEEM Inflation
As mentioned by 
By changing to Equihash we hope to make ordinary computers more competitive relative to high end GPUs with optimized algorithms. Over the past couple of months one or two people have dominated the Steem mining queue. They have either identified a computational shortcut or implemented a private GPU algorithm. The Equihash algorithm was adopted by the creators of Zcash, a recently hyped privacy-oriented crypto-currency. This algorithm is designed to make heavy use of randomly accessed memory. The computations are very simple, but they require 128 MB of ram accessed in a manner that should saturate the memory bus
GitHub: Update witness to mine with equihash
GitHub: Update pow2 op to use equihash
Steemit is ready to be updated on the 6th December after STEEM Witnesses decided to postpone the release of Hardfork 0.16.0, so that there is more time to address any issues and to fully test the new version
And
This Update is particularly important because there are major changes about to take place.
One of the biggest change will be the modification of STEEM Annual Inflation Rate which determines how much new STEEM tokens will be minted and there is also a change when it comes to new STEEM Tokens being allocated within Steemit's Ecosytem. Steemit is build on top of STEEM's Blockchain, you may think of it as a Social Media which distributes it's official tokens among its user, this is what makes Steemit so unique because unlike any other cryptocurrency, value lies in Social Interactions & Communitcations.
Steemit is like a Central Bank with STEEM being it's official currency with duty of printing money(mints cryptocurrency) but instead all of the money going to higher Authorities, it get distributes to Client's directly. We all benefit from this ecosystem while STEEM Witnesses are in charge of adjusting the mechanism of the platform but are elected by all the thousands and so to be Billions of Steemians. Steemit's goal is to be sustainable, as we benefit from growth so it's a STEEM Witness and Developer's duty to ensure that there is continues growth. Ned Scott & Dan Larimer are the geniuses behind this, giving us power over the project as each individual contributes to Steemit and are the leading pioneers of this Revolutionary Social Media, not afraid to make changes in order to improve ecosystem of STEEM and Steemit as a platform
Personally i think that the Steem Hardfork 0.16.0 is going to improve the situation and definitely drive STEEM prices higher! It's okay for the Developers to make changes since Steemit is still in Beta and always keep in mind that STEEM Witnesses are the ones to approve the changes (We vote our STEEM Witnesses, based on an Democratic Voting System). Ned, Dan and all STEEM Witnesses are working around the clock to provide you the infrastructure based on a entirely new concept that has never been done before
Future is unpredictable but i'm certain that this update will drive STEEM prices, this in return will offset the decline in STEEM Power reward and STEEM Supply. Also it's a good idea to reduce the time period to complete a conversion of STEEM Power & STEEM Dollar to STEEM
Learn how include Smiley's & Icon's using Markdown 😜
Doesn't this go well with the SteemVerify Logo? Anyways, if you spot an error in any of my Guides please feel free to correct me and also if there is anything you would like to see a Guide on, let me know! Dedicated young Steemian interested in getting Vested.
STEEM ON! I personally support STEEM Hardfork Version 0.16.0 😎
