Over the last week I have been travelling in the UK and during that time we had Hardfork 28 which changed a few things. The one part is the HIVE vote value remains constant and does not depreciate in value however the vote value diminishes far quicker than before. The vote value and vote power used to diminish on a sliding scale so a 100% vote when your HIVE Power was sitting at 80% was not a full 2% and more like 1.4%.
I have been monitoring the HIVE Vote power/mana looking at the percentage because we all know the vote power recovers at 0.833% per hour making up the 20% over a 24 hour period. In the past prior to the latest hardfork the ideal was to have your vote power above 80% so it recovered and did not drop into the 60 or 70% region.
The not so great part is on the days I was active when it came time to vote I was sitting on 80% Vote Power and I had not even started my manual curation yet. Before the hardfork I would have been on 88-90% so the difference is around 10% which is 5 full 100% votes. I know manual curation is the best option, but especially when you are away from the blockchain having some auto votes set does mean you are still supporting some users whilst still earning curation.
When you are active everyday voting on those that you follow I think adjustments will have to be made or you will find your vote power slipping each day. The rewards are not affected as they remain stable, but you will get to a point maybe in a few weeks where you need to let the vote power recharge and that to me is a problem. What I just wrote is not exactly accurate either as your vote value with this latest hardfork has also been decreased slightly. My vote value was around 9.7 HIVE and now it is around 8.5 HIVE so a significant drop. This is around 6 HIVE less in curation earnings daily and 6 less HIVE you are giving to others through your votes daily. This means that one needs to keep growing in order to build their values back to where they were once previously. Having rewards coming in via curation, posting and delegating daily is the way consistent growth takes place.
My HIVE vote value is something I monitor regularly as this is one of my growth tools and above is a screenshot prior to the hardfork. Below is the current vote value and the difference is rather significant.
When I first started out on HIVE having a vote that had any type of value is something I have been continuously trying to achieve so voting with a 5% vote value is not something I am keen on doing. Helping others grow by giving a decent vote value is what I strive to do and why I shy away from voting a small percent and prefer to make a difference. I guess the solution is to know drop the percentages slightly and this is what I will try and balance out over the next month or so.
Last night and this morning I visited the Hive Vote app to adjust the automated vote settings. This admin work was way over due and needed to be adjust which will hopefully free up some extra vote power percentages which will allow for more manual curation.
Most of the users I vote are active daily on HIVE so the 20% daily top up to the HIVE Vote power was being used and when it was dropping to at one stage 73% this was not going to work. At some point there would be days of no voting whilst the vote power was recharging and that is not a situation I want to experience. This will be an ongoing tweak until I find the sweet spot and maybe my target of maintaining 80% will be more like 70%.