This is a follow on to a post from a few days ago which can be view here. In the previous post, I explained how the new 5 Vote Target is redistributing power away from active curators and bot’s, to Steemit’s ‘average’ social user. I thought I would take a little time to explain Rate Limited Voting, how it works, and how it impacts curation.
Many users find reading Cryptocurrency White Paper’s heavy going, or some have never even seen one. It’s easy to forget that Steemit is meant to be the ultimate cryptocurrency on-boarding system. So, I’m spending much of my time picking out snippet of useful information for users, that may affect the way they should/will want to interact with the Steemit Platform.
Rate Limited Voting
Curation is a great way for a new user to begin to interact with Steemit. There is however, a few thing that a new users needs to know in order to maximise their return and influence on the Steemit platform.
- Up to 25% of the Rewards a post receives is allocated to Curation: The rewards a users will receive is a function of a number a variable..
- The earlier you vote, the better: This is not absolute, as I will explain, there is a tradeoff. However as a general rule, your reward increases, the more that other users vote after you..
- The first 30mins after a post goes live: If you vote in this window, a certain % of your curation reward will go to the author. If you vote after one second >99% of your curation reward will go to the author. This slides out to, voting at 29mins 59seconds, you will give <1% of your rewards to the author of the post.
- How many Vests you own? The more vests you own, the more influence you will have in curation. The more vests you own, the more rewards you can allocate to an author, the bigger the share of the curation rewards you will receive.
- Your Voting Power: This brings me on nicely to voting power and Rate Limited Voting
You can view your voting power by visiting the following webpage;
and, paying attention to this figure…
As you can see, my account has a voting power of 99.94%. I am not a prolific curator, so I maintain a high voting power. The next user I have selected has a voting power of 66.44%. Now, a vote from this user is still worth far more than it’s is from me (on the account of them having 23x more Vests than myself), however, a vote from this user would be worth more if they voted less.
Voting power is multiplied by a user’s vesting tokens to determine how much share in the reward pool should be allocated to a given work item.
This brings me on the an extract from the White Paper - Page 18/19
A major part of minimizing abuse is the rate-limiting of voting. Individual users can only read and evaluate so many work items per day. Any attempt to vote more frequently than this is a sign of automation and potential abuse.
Through rate limiting, stakeholders who vote more frequently have each vote count for less than stakeholders who vote less frequently. Attempts to divide tokens among multiple accounts also divides influence and therefore does not result in a net increase in influence nor bypass the rate-limit imposed on voting.
This chart was also pulled from the Steem White Paper
What these charts essential show, is that, the more a user votes, the more their voting power falls. Intermittent, normal voting behaviour will results in a user’s Voting Power remaining high, and thus keep their share of the curation rewards high. Continuous voting on posts will resulting a users voting power falling towards zero, and will take far longer to return to high levels afterwards.
The new 5 Vote Target announced in the 0.14.0 update will have the effect of accelerating the fall in voting power, for high levels of voting activity. This has the effect of, intermittent voters receiving a (relative) increase in influence on the Steemit platform. They should also should see their Curation Rewards increase for the same voting activity.
I hope this explains this little characteristic of the Curation Rewards system. Happy to take any questions.