One of the things that was very surprising when I was trawling through voting hundreds of posts was, how many makeup posts were getting voted by the largest curation account on Hive. I mean, literally hundreds of posts in the last week alone - just on makeup. and while I am no expert at putting on mascara myself, I can't say that many of them were of what anyone would consider a job well done. Whoever is doing the curating over there, must have a "type of post" kink.
However, since this is a curation project that is using other people's stake and offering a return, like most of the curation projects, things are going to get quite interesting in the future, now that the Equilibrium hardfork has dropped.
The reason is that pretty much, as long as voting in the first 24 hours of a post going live, every curator is going to get the same percentage return on their vote. A 10 cent vote will get 5 cents, a 1 dollar vote will get 50 cents, a 100 dollar vote will get 50 dollars. What this means is that other than the stipulation of the first 24 hours, there is no need to try and maximize votes.
Now, pre-fork, there was a curve in place that meant for a vote to be worth the maximum amount, the value of the post had to go over something like 16 HIVE, which is about 5 dollars at the moment. That is a fair amount, but not unachievable for many posts as there are lots of voters. However, if a large account has a very large vote, all they really needed to do to maximize their reward was vote on posts that had no or very low vote values and then add theirs to reach over that amount. Quality didn't matter, interest didn't matter, only the vote mattered.
It is because of this that I suspect there are so many highly rewarded ($20+) makeup posts, as it allowed for a maximization of vote value without having to compete with any other curators, as there aren't that many people interested. However, now that the need to maximize in the same way has been removed, this game is no longer needed to be played, unless someone really does have a strong fetish for makeup posts and similar.
Now that there is more equal distribution and far lower curation competition as voting timing is far less relevant, the competition is back on the content creator and, I believe that hoe who have better content will find that in time, they will have a better time of it. The reason is that while there is no reason to worry about the curve anymore, there is also no reason to worry about vote order or whether a post already has a larger reward on it.
The curation project I mentioned above has for a long time avoided curating content that would eat into their curation returns, which lowers their ROI for their delegators and themselves. But, that is no longer the issue and instead, a new issue arises.
While a delegator might want to maximize ROI, if who they delegate to is voting on trash content that doesn't add value, this is going to more heavily affect their ROI, as essentially, all ROI will be the same. This means that a delegator can get their 50% curation on their stake, simple by logging in an d voting on 10 random posts a day - and I am sure some will.
However, if they really want to maximize their ROI, they would be wanting that the posts that are getting voted to add value to the network that adds value to the token they collect in curation. At some point, great, interesting and useful content will be an attractor in itself, especially since it will be this kind of content that is getting rewarded, rather than what no one is interested in.
It is going to be fascinating to observe the change in voting behavior of all users, but especially the large accounts that might have been maximizing curation before, as it could be that we may see the emergence of better quality posts getting more highly rewarded. It is also likely that some are going to be playing games with alt farms (continue in some cases and this might be one of those cases) to add more value to their curation and ROI, as the curve has been removed - so keep an eye out on that - we have free downvotes for a reason.
Personally, I am hoping for far more and at a higher quality of post to start becoming the norm on the platform, at least on the HIVE side of the equation. The second-layer tokens can set up a whole range of options and criteria, but for the native token that is used to underpin the blockchain itself, I would like to see the value go to what and who actually adds various forms of value to the network itself, and keeps a lot of it here.
This hardfork is far more affective than many people have yet realized perhaps, but it is going to start shifting the way people create and curate on the platform. Some of it for the better when they look to combine creation and curation to compound value for the network. Some of it for the worse when they use curation and creation to farm and extract value from the network.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
