A few things are taking place that are very interesting. Could we see the beginning of some roll-outs that were discussed?
If you have not noticed, the upvote button is gone from the page where you write your posts. This is something that was discussed in an update put out by the development team a number of months back. The intention is to change the payout system somewhat to make it more favorable to those curating.
To start, the time of 100% curation payout is being moved up from 30 minutes to 15 minutes. At the same time, the author rewards for upvoting are also being altered.
Here is what was said about that in the post...
While the change to 15 minutes will even the playing field against bots, it doesn’t address the advantage self-voting gives to accounts with respect to curation rewards. If authors vote for themselves right away, they get their author rewards, 100% of the curation rewards from their vote, plus a portion of the curation rewards coming from everyone who votes for the post after them. Any other curator voting at the same time as the author would get 0% of the curation rewards. This gives the author an unfair advantage over other curators because the author can earn additional curation rewards through self-voting.
In order to eliminate this unfair advantage, the unused portion of the curation rewards will be returned to the rewards pool instead of being awarded to the author, thereby increasing the overall percentage of rewards that will be paid to curators. This will better serve the original mission of the curation rewards budget: to ensure that the Steem blockchain distributes rewards to the most valuable content.
https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitblog/hardfork-20-velocity-development-update
Whatever the reasoning, the automatic upvote on one's posts is gone. We will see it is only temporary or a permanent change.
Another development is 
This is what he wrote about the talk he gave at Seoul National University...
Packed house at Seoul National University for my talk on steemit, d.tube, STEEM and Smart Media Tokens:
https://steemit.com/kr/@ned/last-night-at-seoul-national-university
Smart Media Tokens?
Could we be getting close to something announced about this? He is out there discussing that project meaning it is still on the front burner with him.
We know Korea is a hotbed for STEEM with a large following from that country.
This is how
Interviews with http://mk.co.kr/ and Yonhap to kick off my Korea trip. MK news organization is the 92nd most popular website and and Yonhap (yonhapnews.co.kr) is the 77th largest website in Korea:
https://steemit.com/kr/@ned/beginning-my-steem-korean-tour
And then we have this...
https://steemit.com/kr/@ned/my-talk-at-it-chosun
As I said, it all could be coincidental. Nevertheless, it is great seeing the CEO of Steemit out discussing different aspects of what is planned. It would be nice to get some audio or video of the events.
It is also encouraging that
Patience, not a strong point for most of us, is critical. It seems that we might be getting close to being rewarded for it. The Steemit development team decided on a few major projects that is, in their view, going to take STEEM to the next levels.
Velocity, Communities, and SMTs are the three areas that the development team is determined to move ahead with. Everything else is likely on the back burner at this point.
This all is speculation and my attempt at connecting the dots. However, something seems to be brewing within the Steemit world. Hopefully we will have some concrete answers soon.
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