Hardfork 21 is HAPPENING. What will change?
Hello Steemians, exciting times are upon us. On Tuesday, August 27th at 11:00 AM EDT, Steem will go through its 21st hardfork! We previously summarized the changes, but in today’s post we would like to help you understand what you can expect on 11:00 AM Tuesday morning when the hardfork occurs.
What is a Hardfork?
For those who are confused about all of this hardfork business, all you really need to know is that hardforks are a blockchain-specific term for software upgrades. As you probably know, blockchains are impossible to change by design. That’s why we call them "immutable." The chain grows as information is added to it in new blocks while the old information‒the information earlier in the chain of blocks‒stays the same.
This code has to be carefully designed because it protects all the tokens stored on the blockchain, all the social information Steemians choose to store on it, and it also governs the interactions between these two systems. This code has to be “bulletproof” so that as long as people are running Steem nodes, and as long as people are transacting on the blockchain, the chain will continue to grow in accordance with the rules embedded into the blockchain.
Updating the Rules
You can think of a hardfork as an update of the rules going forward. We can’t go back and change the rules that governed the creation of the chain in the past, but we can change the rules in a way that governs the future growth of the chain. This rule change is a little like taking a fork in the road. Some people running the blockchain may choose to continue using the old rules, isolating themselves in the process.
Because this change requires a firm commitment going forward, whether one chooses the new or old rules, it is hard. And that’s how we get the term "hardfork." It is similar to other software upgrades except that all of the nodes in the network have to coordinate their actions so that it happens at the exact same time. We have chosen August 27th at 11 AM for the next coordinated upgrade. One important factor in this choice was ensuring that exchanges were given enough time to prepare.
Maintaining Stability
In many protocols, hardforks are a chaotic event that threatens the stability of the ecosystem. This is because protocols like Ethereum and Bitcoin allow any motivated person to become a node and, as long as any nodes prefer the old software (i.e. the status quo) to the new, the result is a splitting of the chain into two competing protocols. Examples of these can be found with Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, and Ethereum Classic.
DPoS
With Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS), while anyone can produce blocks, only the top 20 block producers as determined by stake-weighted upvote, are "canonical." In order for new software to be integrated into the blockchain a supermajority of Witnesses have to come to a "consensus." The Steem blockchain guarantees that if a supermajority of Witnesses begin running the new software, any blocks from Witness nodes that have not upgraded will be invalidated. This is a classic hardfork.
However, because a super-majority is required, and because the Witnesses are ultimately accountable to Steem’s stakeholders, the odds are maximized toward only positive changes being made, along with very little interest in creating sister-forks; chains that continue being run based on the old rules.
What to Expect
Hopefully all of this happens seamlessly and you don't notice much of anything at all. We, along with many community members and witnesses, have been testing the new version of Steem on our testnet for several months now and have performed the hardfork logic on several smaller testnets.
But as much as we plan and test, it is possible to run into a few hiccups shortly after the hardfork because that will be the first time that new code will be run at scale. Our engineers will be monitoring the state of the network carefully during and after the hardfork so we can react quickly to any problems, should they arise.
User Experience Changes
There are a few changes that will impact how you use steemit.com and other Steem interfaces.
Rewards
The rewards curve is changing. We expect posts that would make more than 20 STEEM under the old rules to earn more after the changes. Those posts that would have made less than 20 STEEM under the old rules will receive less after the changes.
Reward Split
Reward funding is being changed from the 75/25 split that currently exists, to a 50/50 split between author and curator. That means you will be rewarded significantly more for curating content after the fork.
Downvotes
A downvote mana pool is being added, which will allow you to make a few downvotes each day without impacting your ability to earn curation rewards from upvotes.
If you would like to learn more about the changes included in HF21, please read this post.
The Steemit Team
First of all, this is a great opportunity for people to start manually curating the way in which they believe it ought to be done. No more excuses that delegating to bid bots is too much more lucrative. We're all so lucky to be the first people ever with the power to influence and incentivize the behaviors and development that we want to see in the future social web. Let's build that shit together instead of quarreling over "rewards" that don't mean anything else than dilution + lowered STEEM price unless we use it to create something others find worth joining.
This is a great opportunity to sell your free downvotes if you never plan on using them and to use bid bots to make sure all rewards are 20+ SP so you don't get cheated.
Hopefully, the stakeholders that have stayed with Steem through the bear market understands that min-maxing returns from selling down/up-votes doesn't result in profit, but a decrease in the value of their holdings. Let's change that.
@edicted is making a point that is logical. The reality is that most people's posts don't get anywhere near 20 STEEM without bidbots. That's just a cold hard reality. This change is making bidbots more necessary for content producers.
It wasn't always like this. Hardly anyone reaches that level because so much stake is bound up in bid bots. If we can return much of that SP to manually curate content and also build a new culture where people vote to bring value to Steem then it is absolutely possible for more creators to start earning those levels of rewards once again.
No the cold hard reality is that new people will loose interest before they even know how it all works. What they should have done is make post with higher value on it reduce the gain. And those with lower votes gain more. That is logic. Now they are kissing up to high sp people.
We can't know this until we've seen how things play out. But I agree that it is a fair concern that smaller users, communities, and comments in general may suffer.
However, stakeholders can choose to avoid this if they want. We for instance build our curation system on @steempress to add support behind a large number of curation projects. So that smaller users who write original content and get engagement from others can quite easily reach 20 Steem in total post rewards.
Speaking for Steem in general, a lot rests on the assumption that a significant amount of the stake currently delegated to bid bots will go back towards manual curation, as well as downvotes returning rewards from vote farmers to proper users.
Like you said before nearly no one earns 20$ on their posts at the moment. The only people that do are those with either a big pocket or a big following. They will be earning more. But to be frank it is not those people that need to stay around to make a "SOCIAL" network. It are the small people that make or break a big system like steem. We have seen a decline in activity for months now. Because the small people don't interact anymore. Everyone is scrounging to get ever last bit of steem. And what do the devs do? Make shure the small people earn even less while the big whales earn more .... ?
@fredrikaa I think this upgrade is based on wishes how we all want it to be, but it's also based on 0% reality. You who were working on upgrade, should have known better by now
Why would they want to choose to avoid this if they didn't want to choose to avoid this so far?
Ah! that's the KEY question here. If they choooose to avoid 'this' if they want!! eh?
C'mon @fredrikaa. Please, start reading another kind of stuff. :)
I mean we are a SOCIAL NETWORK.. So why not use our voices for things we believe in instead of just making money.. I see arguments for both sides, but I like to personally upvote posts because some people post things I like and sometimes they post things I don't so.. I guess it's like voting.. You have a voice and it's up to you to use it.
I think if people on Steem just voted what they actually liked, it would result in everyone - especially those holding Steem Power - earning more money. Curation rewards and bid bot returns are not "profits" if you're a stakeholder, because it comes from inflation that dilutes your assets. To make real money is to increase the value of the token.
Yes to increase the value of the token is much bette rthan blogging and when we get bloggers to focus on posting about steem OUTSIDE of steem on twitter and youtube reddit etc we can bring in bitcoin holders to invest LARGE bags in steem I MEAN LARGE bags
but yeah its sad to realize that so many people would have a completely different outlook if someone early on at steemit inchad just set up a wolf of wallstreet style marketing dept that pulled in users to an inner circle to see how many new investors one single highly motivated individual could bring in and then TASK that work out to thousands of users... the blokchain is about to undergo things like thsi with TASK token and CAPTCHA and @steenm.ninja INV invite token and its possible distribution via @banjo discord bot for onboarding but we need @steemit @steem @elipowell to check out the work of inertia and maybe fund it to get a massive network of discord steembots issuing steem accounts but EVEN WITHOUT steemit incs help it will happen on its own thats the exciting part. steem is going to start working on its own in a free market way that will show off what steem is truley capable off , all the demand steem can drive froim tribes and steem engine trading and much more.
Really Sherlock? and how do you propose to convince some Indian or African or South-East Asian of whom there are many here that they should save their Steem instead of using their reward to improve their lives ever so slightly?
What the heck does Nationality or race have anything to do with this? Steem has never depended on anyone but a few wealthy whales (From all around the world) to find its true price, and there is no need to keep users that need convincing. They can sell if they want now and waste their steem on a few dollars of food , when they could have held their savings. You arent supposed to cash out of your stock market savings portfolio just because the prices are low :)
Your argument really came out of left field and it feels like youre actually upset about something else, and I understand the concern for steemians in developing countries but they shouldnt deserve and dont want special treatment. They knew what they were getting into, and many of us dont look a gift horse in the mouth.
Many of these people you refrence got a lot of steem for free and if they did buy it, they can wait the market out like everyone else for steem to find a bottom. There arent that many whales who even own very much steem so the bottom is bound to be somewhere near 7 to 10 cents where a few other whales I know got in (They wont want others to get in) So tell the people in developing nations to place their buy orders very low, maybe then they can become whales on steem and if and when we go back to $ to $8 range this will all have been worth it. or it can go down as far as people are willing to sell it to, but there isnt an infinite supply and it cant get too cheap without certain whales being unable to control their urge to buy millions of steem at less than 10 cents ... etc etc
Exactly.
You left out the important of "if you're a stakeholder".
My point was to make it clear that curation rewards and bid bot returns are not "profits" to someone who has bought Steem. Because those tokens dilute their existing stake at the same time. So if you want to get more wealthy as someone holding Steem, your focus should be on what you can do to increase the value of the tokens that you have.
So nothing you wrote made any sense in the full context of what I said.
Not everyone who has bought Steem has done so as an investment. Some have simply bought it as 'pay to play' to increase their enjoyment of the platform.
Always the talk of is of investment and ROI but this is not everyone's primary motive for being here.
Everyone who has 'invested' time here is also a stakeholder. It is still an unlevel playing field designed to exponentially help those with more financial wealth than those without. Exact the people Blockchain technology would benefit the most.
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My sentiments exactly, @nathen007.
I think both social and business are being harnessed here! Isn't it a win win synergy??
Why not both?
I read and upvote many articles. If my vote is worth 0.01 now, it will be worth 0.02 after. That's NOT going to change my voting or curation behaviour one iota.
Rewards mean a great deal to many people here.....not you, of course, you're living the first world dream which is great but there are people here from all over the globe, so try and use a global context to the discussion instead of your simple, rose-tinted first-world perspective.
So you will be withdrawing your delegation to OCDB then from which you make a tidy sum each day?
My comment here is mostly addressing the opportunity to get the tens of millions of SP currently delegated to bidbots to be used to curate to create a web that we want, and the potential impact that can have.
If you want to be taken seriously, then make arguments based on the content of what is said and not the identity of the person saying it. Anyone can earn Steem and become a significant stakeholder here. So the comment does apply to anyone anywhere.
That's my plan. Although ocdb is not like other bid bots since it provides good content creators added opportunity to earn mroe Steem.
Good content creators . Again good depends on your starting definition.
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I hope so.
Shouldn't our main priority be to grow the user base, the price would then take care of itself?
These changes seem to most likely do the opposite of that, do they not?
Yes, this change will indeed deter new users. Create an account. Play a bit around, never get above the dust value, abandon account.
The changes are made to make investors rich. You better be an investor. This way you earn and do not need to write/post/comment.
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But without new users your investment is going down the drain. Slaughtering the goose that lays golden eggs.
On point
Would you guys consider publishing some kind of rankings related to the amount of value posts bring to steemit (ie. backlinks, traffic from social media and search engines, etc)? This might allow bidbots to be more selective and only upvote authors who create content that grows the platform.
Survival guide? There is absolutely nothing in here about sleeping bags and hiding under the bed. I feel cheated.
hahah ! best reply ever ! you made them change the title .. HF 21 yo !
Sleeping bags will be having zippers removed in order to make escape easier when attacked by a bear market, @meesterboom ... Unfortunately, beds will be lowered making it virtually impossible for anyone to hide from being jabbed in the ass with a hardfork….
That's why I don't trust beds!
And what about steemitblog? Been cheated twice now; they changed the headtitle ...
Aw. I feel bad. I was only joking! :0D
...or to hang themselves from...
It's been a long time, since I have commented, but this is awesome! I have been so busy, haven't had much time for content consumption lately.
Hey dude!! Glad you are busy, your YouTube channel working well?
It's the same old same old with me!!
Yeah it is going pretty well! Just passed 70k subs. But it is still like full time work for not even half time pay! LOL Just launched another ebook on Amazon, a little mini cookbook. And started some merch too. Things are progressing, still way slower then I would like! LOL Glad things are well with you.
70K! You are laughing! Once you got that magic 100K Mark you are in turbo charged mode!! Awesome stuff man!
oh yes the coveted "Silver" which really isn't silver play button! haha Thanks man!! :) :)
Aw, it's not silver! Swines!
Lmao!
Lol
Let’s see what happens! I’m prepared! 🤑
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Wow I still can't believe at one point we were fighting for Ethereum for the #2 spot on coinmarketcap!!
https://cointelegraph.com/news/steem-chasing-ether-in-market-cap
That is amazing, just over three years ago. Now we know how much the altcoin market can change in just three years. The other top coins are still there though. Steem is the one that has lost its position majorly.
That's really weird!
When I look at the graph for the convergent linear curve... I don't see it ever going above the old linear curve... why then would a post earn more after the fork?
If I take that into a graph calculator I don't see this go above the old figures anywhere. Are you expecting claims to be worth more STEEM after the fork so that the same amount (slightly less actually) would be worth more STEEM in rewards than before?
I guess that could make sense as the globally distributed claims get less under the same number of rshares being generated through voting. Adding in some more of those free flags to the pool of votes, the same amount of claims might be worth even more in actual rewards... did I just answer my own question?
Some content will earn more from the pool simply because the pool is a zero-sum game in the short term. The absolute value of the curve doesn't matter, only the relative value. Whatever is reduced the least (which in practice is the higher end) will actually be an increase in practice.
You did!
Linear does not mean proportional. Your blue line is slightly wrong, it should not go through (0,0), there is a small SP gap that is deducted from each upvote - about 3 SP if I recall.
Look at the graphs in the old reward curve post - then factor in the general loss of author rewards.
And what is that supposed to mean???
I know... since HF20 50 million rshares are always deducted from every vote... that's more like 1.5SP I think... you wouldn't even see that in the image of the graph unless zooming in very very very close. But yes, I did not include it in the graph, it's totally irrelevant to my initial question.
I still don't get what you are trying to tell me.
Please correct me if I am wrong. If I buy an upvote post hardfork, I will be paying curators 50% instead of 25%? I believe this will put the nail in the coffin of buying votes as a means to earn.
Actually, it will do the oposite. Everything about HF21 is hardwired to promote growth of the bidbot economy within the main STEEM ecosystem.
correct. the changes needed are minimal and, let's not forget, the value of any paid vote is relative to the value of one's upvote (of an upvote in general).
The price of bought votes will likely decline. Whatever other changes might also happen due to freer use of downvotes, differences in voting behaviour, etc. is more speculative and more difficult to predict.
I’m thinking some will still survive by increasing Roi to buyers from their curation. Some will probably adapt to a token as a means of paying back value. Who knows! 😂
Or curation trails might be the way to go just like it did couple years ago. 🤷🏼♂️
Did the custom json collision semi-solution make it into the fork? I've seen vague mentions of that but it doesn't seem to be in any of your posts.
At this point that's much more important to the future of user experience than the entire voting system.
#sbi-skip
If you mean increasing the number of allowed
custom_jsonops per block, yes - that has been bumped to 5 per block from 1.The complete release notes are here
I have only earned 20 SBD once or twice on a Curied post - before STEEM dropped. (A Curie used to be worth 50+ SBD. Now, it's around 9-10 SBD.)
From what I have seen, the vast majority of quality posters are lucky to earn even 1 SBD per post! So, the ones that have the means to buy their votes will do well from this HF. The rest of us will suffer.
What's your plan to keep good bloggers around? What's your plan to attract new ones? The life of Steem depends on content producers, yet every time we turn around, it's harder and harder to function unless you can afford to put in serious investment - and who is going to do that when the bloggers are leaving - or not even bothering to join in the first place?
I'm actually really excited about this, The way I see it. Is Authors will get rewarded more, Because people can make money just by voting. So for those people who are posting just for profit, Won't have to. This will hopefully drop the amount of posters but get those with power to ensure they are using their votes.
It's just like how the tribes have been, with the incentive to manually curate due to 50/50 rewards which is what I did. Steemit for awhile didn't give too much for hard work, except for your upvotes @kaylinart and then odd times you get lucky to get something decent.
It will be good to see anyone working hard on a post, get rewarded from more people upvoting with higher values and knowing you both get rewarded!
I really, really hope so! If so, it could be a real boon for Steem - and a model for the other blockchains to follow.
Hahaha Yeah! @kaylinart. I just wonder what the heck will be available to 'Curate' in an environment of exclusively pure c-u-r-e-i-t-o-r-s? ;p
The post says 20 STEEM, not SBD (which is about $3.40 at current price).
Good catch. Apologies.
Still, that makes the number around 6 SBD right now - only my curied posts get that much - and I'm sure the same is true for the vast majority of bloggers on the platform.
I really hope the hoped-for increase in curation makes up for the loss that most of us will see.
No apologies needed, it’s a bit confusing. I just wanted to be sure you knew!
I agree with you..From last 15 days, I am posting 2 to 3 quality post every day, I hardly make 2 SBD But I believe in Steem. It will rise as of now i am not earning enough but i am trying to build solid reputation inside the community.
The break even point they mentioned in the post is 20 STEEM not 20 SBD. That's more like $3.60 at current prices. Even somewhat below that, the effect is pretty modest. People are freaking out thinking they'll get completely screwed out of rewards if the post value is below 20 STEEM but mostly that isn't true. At 15 or 10 STEEM you may not even notice the difference given regular daily price change on STEEM of +/- 5-10% as well as other factors.
Lately, most of my posts (original and high quality) end between 1 and 3 STEEM. (Average 2.) I've been on STEEM 2 years, full time, and I work with a team of models, including my wife. We invested $5000 into STEEM when we arrived. Our current total is LESS THAN that! In fact it's far less, only $500. We have worked 2 years, and invested 5 grand, and it's down to $500. And we are putting out excellent content that is in demand. Will my 2 STEEM payouts be decreased by the new 20 STEEM break even point? I think so.
But we will get a fraction of a STEEM more for our curation, so that's supposed to make it okay?
HF21 is even worse than HF20 and that's saying something.
In fact this is the most important thing. Your STEEM/SP is worth less because the price of Steem has declined, in large part because Steem has not been successful in executing on its vision.
That is more important than payouts. You aren't going to make back $5000 in losses (and hopefully make more than that) through payouts no matter what. This is a futile treadmill mentality. Work to improve the value of Steem.
People are much too focused on payouts as a source of investment payoff when they should be focused on the success of Steem and the price/value going up as a result.