❓Answering Common Questions: What do I Need to Know about the Next Steemit Update (Hard Fork 20) 💻
The two biggest changes revolve around self-voting and curation rewards.
Here's the condensed version
To get the most earnings from your own vote after the Hard Fork 20 update goes into effect:
- DO NOT upvote your own post when it's created
- DO instead wait until the post is 15 minutes old and then vote.
A longer, more in depth explanation is provided below.
Changes to Self-Voting Posts and the Curation Penalty Timer
Changes to voting on your own post when it's created.
Right now there is a curation penalty for voting on a post before it's 30 minutes old. When you vote on your own post when it's first published, all of the curation you would have earned from the vote is instead given to the author (which in this case is you.) So voting on your own post gave you a larger cut of the earnings.
After the Hard Fork 20 updates, this cut of the curation reward will instead be put back into the *rewards pool and NOT THE AUTHOR. So if you still vote for your own post when it's published, you will increase the payout earnings from your vote, but the curation cut will no longer be given to you. This means that the cut for curators will end up paying closer it's 25% share.
The 30 minute curation penalty is being reduced to 15 minutes.
This penalty is linear, meaning that at 0 minutes old, it's a 100% penalty of the voters curation reward. Currently, with the 30 minute rule the penalty would give 50% possible curation at 15 minutes and 100% at 30 or more minutes of a post existing.
After the Hard Fork 20 updates, this will be reduced to 15 minutes. So you'll then be able to avoid this penalty by voting at 15 or more minutes after a post has been published.
Removal of Power Down Restriction
So far, newly created accounts have been given some Steem as Steem Power. However this will be changing, where this Steem will instead be burned (i.e. destroyed) instead of being given to that account. Not only will this prevent those that sign up to just withdraw the Steem they were given, but it hopefully also helps to speed up the account creation process.
The other piece along with this is that Steemit accounts couldn't choose to power down (i.e. change their Steem Power to tradeable Steem over 13 weeks) until they had 10 time the amount they had started the account with. But after the Hard Fork 20 takes effect, users will be able to power down whenever they want. The 10-times restriction will be removed.
Final Thoughts
The changes in self voting and the curation penalty timer are the biggest pieces to a day to day user. The best strategy to maximizing what earnings you keep (after the curator's cut) is to NOT vote on your own posts when they are first published. Instead, try to wait until it is 15 minutes old and Then upvote it.
Note that this will ONLY effect voting for your own posts. For curators, things will be very similar to how they are now, just that you can now vote at the 15 minute (changing from 30) mark without any penalty.
Please upvote and resteem if you found this guide helpful.
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There are more items included in this update, but the ones listed above are what I see having the biggest impact on general users. You can find full details of the Hard Fork 20 announcement at the @steemitblog posts:
Image Sources:
Hard Fork
Stop Watch
I never knew until now the difference of how rewards are acutually beneficial 👌🏽
Oh geez! Thanks for this. I'll have to figure out if I still want to upvote my post immediately or wait. Curation rewards aren't as important to me on here. I'm more just an author.
I can understand that. I pay next to no attention to curation rewards when I vote...not my style.
Though I doubt I'll self vote right away after the HF...since I'd rather the cut go to the people voting on me over the going back to the reward pool. :)
So glad I came upon this post @sykochica. I've been here 5 months but haven't been participating in the community much until last week. I invested $800 and decided I'd give it a go. It's been hard figuring out all the rules, tips and tricks so this is helpful stuff. I don't have any bad habits developed before the fork lol. I'm glad I found your account. I've followed to keep up with you tips. thx
I'm more than happy to help! I know it's daunting, there's a bombardment of things to learn early on. Don't let it overwhelm ya, just pick up a few new things each day.
I have a link at the top of my blog ( in the profile section) that goes to my full list of guides if it's helpful. :)
Oh, that's awesome @sykochica . I'm going to hop on that link. You're no psycho lol. You're awesome.
oh, and if you a moment, check out my custom chucks on my latest blog. I'm thinking of giving away some Steem ones but not sure if you can run giveaways on the site. I might just give a few pairs to people who have been helpful to me. I believe in ROC (return on community)
Giveaways are allowable, just be explicit of the rules...very explicit. Include things like:
I know this is a bit overboard of a breakdown, and you don't have to do all this. It's just how I ran giveaways, contests, etc ...be as straight up as possible. :)
perfect . Thank you so much @sykochica . Really appreciate that advice. Sorry my reply votes are only worth 3cents. But someday they will be worth more. Hopefully Steemit Converse will be a "thing" lol.
Bah..no worries. I'm happy to help out.
I hope to come across someone wearing some "Steem-tops" someday. :)
Haha. You will! I'm going to read your guides now.
Most of this stuff I didn't know before, I've learnt slot ... Thanks for sharing
Ahh, I love all your posts! Such good info to know and so helpful!
Thanks for the informative post! I really wished to see some key member of the steem community simplifying the most important changes and updates happening in the way things work. I recently offered it in a post by Tim cliff about witnesses updated. You did it perfectly - elucidating the most critical point in a simple manner.
Can you explain what a hard fork means in our context? In bitcoin it means you will have btc and say bch - why is it called an hard fork in our case?
Thanks ahead :)
I'm happy to be helpful! I definitely remember when I was new here (and to crypto) where I'd read updates and not feel I understood.
Think of hard forks as updates that change the rules of the blockchain...though they don't always end up splitting the currency like it did with Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. So in the case of Steem, changing how voting works (like changing the 30 minute penalty to 15 minutes), whether rewards are scaling versus linear (a change made months back, etc require a hard fork. However, before a hard fork is enacted, the witnesses have to vote and have consensus on whether to implement it.
Thank you for the summary. We'll have to wait and see what other changes there will be for steemit. All for the better I hope!
Happy to do it! Yea...I'm really curious to see how they setup the communities as well as the Smart Tokens. It will be an interesting year! :D
Steem On!
They are some aspects and rules in this post that I did know at all! By the way where can I find a detailed list of steemit rules? It seems I have breached the rules so far due to practical ignorance :(
Ummm, I don't think there's a single consolidated list of 'rules'. It'd take going through all the previous hard forks/updates and the original white paper.
If you were referring to the curation penalty...that wasn't so much of a rule as it was how the code handled things. Voting before the 30 minute mark (15 after the hard fork) isn't breaking any rules..it just forfeited parts of your curation reward and gave it instead to the post's author.
Was there anything in particular you were curious about? I might be able to help out.
In an older jerry video he says to always upvote i guess ive been takibg outdated advice or didnt fully understand until now. Seems kind of like a hassle. But im still learning!
This is still the case right now..he is/was correct. Personally, I do upvote my own posts (though almost never my own comments) and have recommended that to others. (This would be a little different discussion if it's a whale or extreme cases.)
This is an upcoming change (though I've not seen a exact date yet) and I'll be changing from voting on my posts on creation to the 15 minute mark. Just keep an eye out for it being released.
Thank you!
No problem. I definitely didn't want to be making you worry or be more confusing. :)
Well, I have almost no idea how the things happen in steemit but I have fun anyway :)
It seems there is a code blessing on all of us! :)
Thank you for putting this in terms we can understand!!!
Absolutely! It's so much easier with the bullet points that will actually effect the general user. :)
Yeah i read a post last week about it and at the end i was still like...huh??
I've been here since may and I literally don't have a clue how this site works. At all. It's all gibberish to me.
Is there anything in particular you would like to know? Or if it's helpful I've got a link to dozens of guides I've done at the top of my blog (in the profile section.)
Simple and informative, so when does this Hard Fork 20 will happen?
There's not been a date set yet. As far as I know. While I'd figure we'd see this within a couple months, but this is a complete guess.
I was about to ask that same question! Lol. Hopefully this makes account creation easier for mass adoption. 2018 is gonna be the year of STEEM.
I've heard that it was supposed to, but I wasn't able to directly source that from the posts, preferring to err on the side of caution.
On the upside, it should remove the problem have had when posting due to too little bandwidth. This often happened with accounts that powered down to too little an amount.
Thank you, how’s Christmas?