We've not made a public announcement on our Discord as there are still a number of changes we'd like to make to improve that experience. That being said you're welcome to join the fun in there by heading over to http://discord.sportstalk.social.

As for the change in your voting power its more ot do with the distribution of tokens. As there are now more users with SPORTS there is more competition for the rewards pool. This is similar to why posts from the early days of Steem in 2016 had post rewards in the tens of thousands of Steem but now we never see those kinds of rewards even for the top trending posts.

EDIT to include additional answers:

You will still receive Steem/SBD/Steem Power rewards for your posts just as you normally would on the base layer of the Steem blockchain. We don't currently take any Steem post beneficiary rewards for our sites. As for your SPORTS payouts they always come liquid. This is the way that Steem Engine is set to distribute rewards.