The first two days of Hardfork 19 has been a bonanza for authors and curators alike. However, it seemed clear that things were too good to be true - and they were. If we look back at pending payouts, we can see that minnows have gained massively, while top authors took major cuts worth over a thousand dollars. But shortly after HF19, it was not just minnows, even popular authors were making more money from new posts. I have an explanation for why. My numbers may be off completely, please feel free to correct.
During the HF18 era, the reward_balance had exceeded the reward pool for some reason, sitting at 1.69 million right before HF19. Meanwhile, reward pool generated for 30 days is approx. 1.44 million. (75% of inflation)
Right after HF19 went through, the reward_balance is being expended at a faster rate, presumably to achieve equilibrium with the 1.44 million reward pool. Currently, reward_balance is down to 1.52 million, which means 0.17 million has been slashed off in the first 2 days of HF19. That would suggest that within the next day or so, reward_balance will finally equal the reward pool generated.
I don't know what happens when reward_balance matches the reward pool. Does it go down further before bouncing back up? Or does it level off for a stable reward pool?
Either way, enjoy your rewards while they last, things will be going down by a factor of 2-3 very soon (as that is how much extra SP and SBDs were paid out last couple of days). Minnows can still rejoice - your rewards and influence will still be way up from pre-HF18 days.
Sources for this info -
https://steemdb.com/api/funds
https://steemd.com/