What is a Steemit Upvote? - An Illustrated Guide
What is an “Upvote”?
An upvote on Steemit.com is very different than a vote on any other social-media website. Clicking that little arrow is much more than a “Like” on Facebook or a “Heart” on Instagram. On Steemit, votes are rewarded with STEEM!
In today’s Toolkit post, we’ll explain what an “upvote” actually is, where the rewards come from and and how they are distributed on the Steemit website.
Where does the STEEM come from?
When you upvote someone’s post - that value is not being withdrawn from your personal account. (This is a common misunderstanding.) You’re not giving anyone anything from your personal savings or STEEM Power. Instead, you’re vote is actually tapping into a brand new pool of STEEM. There’s a fresh batch of STEEM produced everyday, and it’s called the daily rewards pool.
New STEEM tokens are being created all the time. The rewards pool is an amount of STEEM generated every day from inflation. Right now, several tens of thousands of STEEM tokens are being created every day (Approximagely 63,000/day. The percentage of yearly inflation shrinks incrementally as time goes on). This daily STEEM represents the pool from which your vote takes a certain amount and distributes it to where you’ve directed.
What happens when you vote?
When you click the upvote button you are telling the STEEM Blockchain, “this is where I want X amount of the daily rewards pool to go.” The amount that you’re able to direct is dependent on the amount of STEEM Power you have. So the more SP you have, the more of the daily rewards pool you can direct to posts you like! (Your vote is not affected by liquid STEEM or SBD, learn more about the differences here.)
You can verify how much voting power your account has at any time by plugging it in at this website - www.steemnow.com
Curation Rewards
An upvote on Steemit is also a tool for you to earn curation rewards. Simply put, when a post or comment is paid out a portion of the rewards is redistributed back to the people that helped generate that amount. If you upvote a post, you’re effectively helping it gain visibility and support and you’re rewarded for that curation.
The amount you get back from a post you upvoted depends on a number of factors - how much the post made during payout, at what point in time you upvoted that post, the number of votes before you upvoted, voting power, and so on and so forth. Without going into too much detail, the following can be used as the basic rule of thumb-
The earlier that you vote on a potentially successful and highly rewarded post, the more you will make in curation rewards. You can read more about the exact calculations of how curation rewards work here.
Exploring More @sndbox Steemit Toolkits
Thanks for reading! We hope you found this "Upvote Guide" useful. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to reach out in the comment section. Check out our other toolkit posts for helpful tips and ideas :
Thanks for the explanation
You're very welcome!
May I translate your post to Russian? I need to share is with RU community
Absolutely! As long as we're linked and accredited. Be sure to send us a link so we can upvote it! Thanks @allfabeta
Your post in Russian https://steemit.com/ru/@allfabeta/chto-takoe-stimit-apvot-illyustrirovannoe-posobie
Fantastic, thank you! Wonderful work spreading the word into the RU community!
for sure I'll do
Thank you for another informative article! Explaining how Steemit actually works behind the scenes, to be able to reward authors and curators all while built on top of a blockchain and backed by a cryptocurrency. For newer users, myself included, understanding how this platform actually works helps us understand to properly utilize it to its utmost potential. Upvoted and resteemed to spread the understanding conveyed to more users! Thanks again!
Thank you for the feedback!
Excellent job here man, keep it up ;)
You bet! Thanks for the support :)
awesome work, very clear, short and sweet explanation, really liked it, upvoted and followed, cheers .
I agree the post was simple enough that i could understand it.
Many thanks for the kind and supportive feedback @applesspatrick!
thanks for sharing , it will help many users
Glad you found it useful! Thanks @hrsagar
A very useful post Sir @sndbox, before I ever thought as you said above, that the steem we give to other people via upvote will reduce the steem we are misunderstanding it missed, but now Sir, it is very helpful to me. Thank you for share this post Sir.
Thanks for your support @herzaseptian! Yes, an important note - upvoting doesn't take any STEEM away you from. Upvoting is totally free!
Wow, that was one of the best explanations of the topic. @sndbox, You nailed it. Accept the gift of a new follower. Resteemed!
A couple of weeks ago, I watched a YouTube video on the same topic by some other Steemian. I think sharing it here will help a lot. So, here it is:
Awesome this is such a cool instructional video! Thanks for sharing :)
That animation is awesome! Very good for noobies to understand where does the money come from.
Thanks for the great explanation!
Great post
Thanks!