After talking to a number of users regarding this topic, I thought I would do a quick post explaining why I believe this Update to be a Positive one for the Steemit community.
It was a conversation I had with @razvanelulmarin which eventually convinced me to cover this topic. Although he had all the answers, he had received conflicting information which was confusing matters..
This change was announced by @steemitblog in the 0.14.0 update here;
Target Votes of 5 per Day instead of 40
We are changing the target number of votes per day from 40 to 5 so that more people keep their voting power below 100%. The purpose of this change is to rebalance power toward normal users and away from bots. You can still vote as often as you like, this change merely impacts the speed at which voting power is consumed.
A number of users thought that this update would reduce the rewards being allocated to Curators and Creators on the Steemit Platform. This is not the case.
The Contribution Rewards ‘Pot’ in it’s entirety is not impacted by voting. Curations and Creation rewards (in total) are the same whether there is 100 Votes or 1,000,000 Votes. Curation and Creation rewards are currently being produced at a rate of 40 Steem per minute on the Steem Blockchain.
Some users believe that less votes means less total rewards,...not true. Rewards (in terms of $ amount) are only impacted by the Steem Market Cap. Less votes will only result in each vote being worth more to the beneficiary.
Who will the Change Impact?
This update essentially depletes active users voting power quicker. This doesn’t mean that, after 5 votes, a user has zero voting power, however it means that, users voting power will begin to fall much quicker than it did before with a 40 Vote Target.
It’s worth remembering here that, voting power directly affects curation rewards. The more voting power a user has, the bigger the share of the curation rewards pot they receive, everything else being equal. It is also true that, the more voting power a user has, the more funds they can allocate to an author with an upvote.
Where some users lose voting power, Other users gain.
Because there is a fixed pot of rewards, devoid of voting activity, if some users ability to allocate these funds is diminished, other users ability to reward Creators is synthetically increased. This update is thus, a redistribution of power on the Steemit platform.
The Losers
- Curation Bot’s: These user accounts will be the biggest losers. Bot’s voting 00s of times per day on author lists will see their voting power diminish far more rapidly than before. This may result in these accounts having to adapt their Curation strategy to be more focused…
- Active Curation Humans: These users will also be losers. This new update will (I predict) trigger these users to become far more precious over their up votes, only uprooting content and authors they really believe in.
- Authors on ’The List’: These users will see their author rewards fall, as the bots and curation humans voting power is diminished.
Essential, the users which this impacts in a negative manner are those who have been doing very well for the past few months. Some of this extraordinary performance is being reallocated to...
The Beneficiaries
- The Average Curator: These users voting power will increase, and thus they will gain a larger share of the curation rewards.
- The Average Creator: Because voting power will be distributed more, the average creator can expect to see their rewards share increase. I expect to see creation rewards spread further and wider than they were before.
- The Steemit Platform - Everyone: More democracy, and fairer platform for everyone. This can only be good for the Steemit platform moving forward. This is a key point of interest impacting Steemit's level of success moving forward.
Summary
Small changes like this moving forward really help the distribution of Steem and user retention on the Steemit platform. Curation Rewards have been very centralised (the 1% doing very well, the masses not so much) for the past few months, so it is good to see the developers stepping up and making a change that will create a more democractic Steemit moving forward.
High levels of Distribution and Circulation of Steem is key to the success of this project. I see this as a small step in a marathon long journey towards achieving these end's...