We're just five days away from the next hard fork being implemented. My understanding is that this hard fork will accomplish three things, two of which I like and one of which I hate.
Number One The rewards curve will become more linear, meaning that the more Steem Power you have, the more voting power you have, and this increase happens in a gradual slope upwards, not a curved exponential hockey stick. So if having 1,000 SP gives me x amount of influence, then having 10,000 SP will give me 10x amount of influence.
While I think this could lead to the creation of multiple sock puppet accounts over which whales spread out their Steem Power (the earlier exponential growth in influence was meant to motivate whales to keep all their SP in a single account), it does seem like a more equitable way to do it. The whales were getting exponential increase in their influence but then they couldn't use it once the whale experiment started. So now their increased influence is only directly proportional to how much SP they have. They won't have as much influence as they used to have, but at least they should be able to award full strength upvotes again (which to me is a major point to becoming a whale in the first place), and if they can't (if the whale experiment won't die), then I guess they can go the sock puppet route.
I think this might mean that minnow upvotes will enjoy an increase in value, which will be rather nice.
Number Two A full strength upvote will be worth four times as much as it is now, and it will deplete voting strength four times as fast. So instead of getting 200 upvotes each worth 0.5 percent in a five day period, you get 50 upvotes each worth 2 percent in that same five day period. This is great for people who don't vote frequently. If you average only ten votes a day, then you will actually get to use more of your portion of the network influence you have. If you liked the old system better, all you have to do is cut your voting strength down to 25 percent and voila. You get your 40 daily upvotes yet again. Almost.
Number Three This is the part I don't like. Under the current system, when you make an upvote, your voting strength is deducted by 0.5 percent. Theoretically, you could make 200 upvotes all at once and that would run your strength down to zero and you have to wait for it to replenish, which it will do in five days. This system works just fine for the occasional Steemit user who does all his or her upvoting in a short period of time. You can bang out your forty daily upvotes in one hour and then wait until the next day for your voting strength to replenish and do it all over again, which each upvote carrying equal weight.
Under the new system, the two percent you put into your full strength upvote is not two percent of your entire potential voting strength, but only two percent of the remaining voting strength you have. This means that if you vote 40 times in a short time, each vote will be worth slightly less as it represents two percent of what remains after the previous vote was cast.
This is a HUGE reason why I decided to break down and go the botvoting route. I would do all my upvoting in a two or three hour window, that time that I'm actually on Steemit. Botvoting allows me to basically spread out my upvoting over an entire 24 hour day so that hopefully, as people on my list or on the Streemian trail I follow post at different times throughout the day, my vote will reach them throughout the day without me having to be personally involved. The new system favors upvoting at a steady pace throughout the 24 hour day, and no real person does that. So, I guess my conclusion is that the Steemit developers really prefer botvoting.
Hopefully they will soon realize this and return to making the full strength upvote draw the same percentage of what the voting strength is at 100% so that all upvotes are equal (unless I choose to make them less equal by using my slider). But it probably won't stop me from botvoting. I just hate the thought of one of my botvoted small minnows being gypped just because he happened to post right after 25 other small minnows on my list just got done. If you're worried about it, Streemian does allow you to time your posts, and you can go look up the metrics about when most of the posts are published and specifically time your post to avoid that window, so that when my upvote comes along, my voting strength has had a chance to replenish so that your 2% can get closer to 2% of full strength as opposed to 2% of only 50%.
At this point I'm planning to continue voting at full strength, and I'm looking forward to seeing what my full strength upvote will actually be worth compared to the 4 cents it's worth right now. I'll watch my voting strength closely in the time leading up to and right after the hard fork and see if it makes sense for me to make any adjustments. But for now, you'll get full strength, so enjoy it :)
