@SportsVoter Goes #NewSteem

When we first launched @sportsvoter 4 months ago it was a different time on the Steem blockchain. Since then Steem has had new hardforks that have moved the ecosystem away from bid bot usage and back towards manual curation that isn't paid for. This has dramatically changed the usage for @sportsvoter and while we still burn tokens when users buy votes there are less users seeking this kind of upvote.

That's led us to consider how we utilize the community's Steem Power that is delegated to @sportsvoter. We want to ensure we are utilizing this to the best of our abilities while still maintaining our integrity for how we vote. That's why we've determined that we will no longer be accepting any bids for votes starting on December 1st, 2019. Any SPORTS sent to @sportsvoter after that time will no longer be redeemable for a vote and will be returned to the sender as soon as possible. We've instead decided to support content posted to #sportstalk with free upvotes from @sportsvoter. We hope this will encourage users to continue sharing their favorite sports moments with us and allow us to bring more rewards into our ecosystem.

The way we determine which content will receive an upvote will be determined by the newly elected referees. On December 1st we will be taking a snapshot of our ongoing referee elections to determine 9 referees that SPORTS stakeholders feel have the ability to determine content quality. These users will now have the ability to upvote content they find valuable to signal for additional rewards. If 5 of the 9 referees agree content is valuable then @sportsvoter will follow with an upvote on that piece of content based on the average of the referees that voted for it.

Curation Rewards

We'll still maintain parts of the @sportsvoter mission by taking a portion of the curation rewards earned by voting and use that to provide buy support for SPORTS. We will be powering down the curation rewards earned at various points and then using those funds to purchase SPORTS tokens from the market and then burn them by sending them to @null. This will continue to help remove additional rewards from circulation.

The rewards not used to burn SPORTS immediately will be used to help power new accounts that join the #sportstalk ecosystem. For accounts that get created within the ecosystem we will offer a 15 Steem Power delegation for a period to help users begin posting. After that period the delegation will be removed and either used to power more new users or converted to SPORTS to help with burning at that time.

Delegations Unaffected

While we are closing the pay per vote we are not ending our SPORTS payouts for Steem Power delegations. Users who delegate Steem Power to @sportsvoter will continue to be paid from 10% of our daily token inflation based on their percentage of the total delegated Steem Power. They will be sent disbursements in a SPORTS / SPORTS POWER split daily from @sportspromo.

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