Today is the day when hardfork 21 takes effect. This will affect our rewards, but it remains to be seen who the winners and losers will be. The Steemit statement that posts that made under 20 Steem before will get less has gotten a lot of attention. It is up to us to determine where the rewards go. The changes make 'bid bots' less profitable to use, so maybe we will see more real curation, but I expect a lot will still be strategic for maximum profit. For the good of Steem we ought to be voting up posts that deserve it.
We shall also see how big accounts use their free downvotes. They could free up a lot of rewards from posts that do not really warrant them.
I am curious about the economics of voting on comments. I do it to encourage engagement, but I know I won't make much from curation that way. Do they need to earn much more than 2c to pay the commenter?
The Steem price had been improving over the weekend, but has dropped again.
The missing statistics I'm referring to are on Hypestat where I check how the Steemit site is doing. It has been falling in the Alexa ranks as it loses visitors. Today I notice that some previously prominent countries are missing from the list. Where are UK, Germany, Japan and Spain? USA is getting a larger share and India has moved up to second. Venezuela and Nigeria are rising. I just wonder why the other countries have gone missing as I cannot imagine they suddenly lost all those visitors.
Part of the reason for the reduced visitors is the growth of other Steem front ends. I have been using that adds a lot of useful features such as notifications and data on tribes. I love that you can log on with Steem Keychain and access everything. It works across a lot of the Steem-related sites now, but be aware of the security implications. Make sure your PC is not vulnerable.
The hardfork is another transition point for Steem. It will change various things. I hope it comes out better than before, but it depends a lot on what we users do.
I will slip in a plug for which will continue to support small accounts. You can support it with delegation or follow the voting trail.
Steem on!