I bet for most of you this was a very pleasant surprise!

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Yesterday Steemit released it latest update to the Steem blockchain rules, called a Hard Fork (19). These will periodically happen, each one having different effects. Yesterday's Hard Fork changed how much votes give, how many votes you get and tweaked curation rewards (from voting.) So let's step through a few of the more common questions as well as my personal take on this update.

Q: Why did my payout amounts change so drastically?

This Hard Fork was nicknamed "Equality" since it was changing how much influence people got from their Steem Power. Up until now influence ran off of Steem Power^2 (squared), meaning that someone with 10 times your Steem Power had 100 times the influence. But now, it's linear, meaning that someone with 10 times your Steem Power has 10 times the influence. Hence the name equality..it brought the influence between differing sized users much much closer.

Q: Wow! Why does my vote give so much more now?!?!

Along the same lines as above...your vote is how you influence things. So the influence exerted by your Steem Power is much closer to other users (especially big ones) meaning your vote is worth more now. This is also coupled with your 100% votes (either if your new without the vote slider bar or set at full if you do.)

Brand New users are now able to give a penny right out of the gate!

Q: Can I cast less votes now without it draining my voting power percentage?

First...if you would like more information on voting power percentage and the slider bar read THIS GUIDE.

Now the short answer is that you used to be able to cast 40 votes a day (while allow your voting power regenerate) you can now only cast 10 votes a day (while allow your voting power regenerate). However, each of your 100%/Full Strength votes has 4 times the strength as before. So essentially if you want, you can give a single post or comment FOUR UPVOTES worth of money. If you don't vote very much, you'll probably find this to be easy. But if you vote a lot, you'll need to use that slider bar more than ever before.

Just to give a few "Mathy" details:

We regenerate 20% voting power percent in 24 hours
BEFORE the Hard Fork each 100%/Full Power vote reduced your vote power percent by 0.5%.
NOW, after the the Hard Fork each 100%/Full Power vote reduced your vote power percent by 2%.

So be careful not to drain your vote power down too much or you won't be able to give as much money as you would be able to otherwise, as well as a reduction in the curation rewards you can earn.

Q: Did curation rewards change?

From what I've read, there was a tweak to the curation reward formula, but it should end up being about the same as it was before. The change was just to offset the changes in voting. However, for the next few days to a week, I suspect you'll see higher curation...returning to the pre-Hard Fork levels after that.

Q: What does @Sykochica think about the Hark Fork 19?

I've been rather excited about this for a while. Being able to give more with your votes is exciting. Hell, even brand new people are able to to give a penny now. And to me this is a really big deal. For some of us in the past, it took a looooong time to be able to give a penny away consistently. It was one of those really exciting milestones here on Steemit. Now, everyone gets this joy right out of the gate, ideally allowing 'good' people to give away pennies to other 'good' people.

I remember a time when I had 3-4000 Steem Power and couldn't even do that. This made me feel like my votes didn't really matter, so I didn't really care a ton on what I voted on or how much. But NOW, I really try to keep my vote power percent high, so I can keep giving larger amounts when I upvote things. I get to help bolster tags that I'd love to see more posts in, but haven't had large payouts available in the past.

My concern, however is that new and smaller users (everyone really) now need to pay more attention to what they vote on. If you vote on spam, simple copy/paste stuff, etc than we will just see more of that. Anytime lazy people, scammers, etc feel they can make easy money they will...doing whatever they can to game the system. So I do please beg each of the voters out there..pay attention to what you vote on now. I do NOT want to see scammers or people who just run bot armies draining our reward pool.

Remember that ALL of my guide posts are eligible to be added as entries to the Steem Center Wiki or Operation Translation.

Click here to find out how these can earn you Steem!!

Feel free to ask me anything. I'm here to Help!

I've had slow response times lately, but I try to get a response to every question.

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Image Sources:
Gingerbread Fork

❓Answering Common Questions: Wow! Why did my payouts go WAY up? What's this hardfork I keep hearing about? 🍴