Hi guys, how's it going. The HF21 update does not have release date yet but we more or less know already what changes it's gonna bring. Let's have a look at the updates and how they can change @tipU activity.
Key HF21 Changes
When you look at the proposed (and already confirmed) changes that HF21 brings, it's clear that one of the main goals is to limit demand for bid bots - it's no mystery though, as steemit inc. devs stated this clearly. And I'm OK with that, as milking the system is obviously bad for everyone. Yet, I still think there's place for post promotion, especially the quality content creators that want to build a follower base. Let's make a quick HF21 changes recap and see how @tipU can fit in into the new system.
50/50 split between authors and curators
This means, that the vote value from voting bot has to be at least twice of the payment - otherwise the user who requested the vote will loose money (negative ROI).
Currently the vote value has to be at least x 1.33 of the payment (because author gets 0.75 of the vote, 1/0.75=1.33).
So in order to provide positive ROI, the voting service has to give higher upvotes for the same price. This means less income and profit for the investors but! The curation reward will double. In case of @tipU it means that it will be able to power down more liquid STEEM every week that will be than paid to investors.
So to deal with the lower income that comes from 50/50 split, @tipU will at least double additional STEEM profit that comes from weekly power down.
Of course it's still possible that negative ROI votes will be very common for all the bid bots. In that case the basic upvotes ROI from @tipU will have to be adjusted to ensure proper investors` profit.
Non Linear Reward Curve
Oh, this one is interesting. One of the solutions is to increase the minimum vote payment to around 8 STEEM (from 0.1 currently) - without going into details, with lower payments the upvote would have to be much higher to provide positive ROI and this would greatly lower the investors return rate (and we don't want that).
Yet, it's also possible that the lower payments will stay but users will have to accept that the lower the payment, the lower the ROI. Once HF21 goes live, @tipU will adapt to the general voting services market in this regard.
1 Minute Curation Window
This one is pretty sweet for us because @tipU can vote at any moment - including seconds after the vote request has been sent, while bid bots have fixed schedule of voting every 2.4 hours. This is a tremendous @tipU advantage when it comes to getting best curation rewards which I'm planning to use as much as I can.
To do this, the plan is to introduce additional benefits for users who use @tipU to promote new (just created) posts by giving them better upvote ROI and bonus @tipU profit sharing tokens. The curation reward game will be very important, also because it will be an important source of profit for investors.
Separate Pool For Downvotes
This is where we can draw one interesting scenario: many users, including whales downvote every post that gets upvoted by voting service. This kills voting services market and no one uses @tipU or bid bots. Game over?
Not really - if indeed voting services will be annihilated, I would like @tipU to be transformed into curation bot. A service that aims to use delegated STEEM POWER to maximize the curation rewards, power it down and use the liquid STEEM to pay dividends. This would be fully automated but also manual curation can be involved. Imagine @tipU having an agents (spotters?) that would get paid to find those quality posts and request @tipU upvotes for best curation rewards :)
But in the end I think that voting services will stay with us. The demand may get lower, or the overall market will turn into more professional direction (only big bloggers / business will use them). Some changes and adaptation will be needed but if this means that:
- a) only quality content creators will use voting services
- b) investors will still get good return, also thanks to increased curation rewards
I think we should be good :) Now, time for some other stuff:
@tipU Profit Sharing Tokens
The TPUs at the steem-engine market are lately trading at around 2 STEEM which is pretty crazy price if you ask me. Seems that people like this idea of liquid STEEM POWER (delegated to @tipU) that can be traded at any time.
Currently @tipU is running out of TPUs (442 left the @tipU wallet at the moment of writing this) which means that it's time to print new ones. 1 TPU is backed by 1.1 STEEM POWER and of course this parity will be kept and further increased after printing new tokens.
Please note that @tipU is not selling any TPUs on the market, I prefer to keep as much tokens as I can to allow investors and vote buyers to get them by using @tipU service.
Returning Invested Deposits
Now, to free up @tipU STEEM POWER and use it to back new tokens I will be returning deposits that are working as investments.
Back in the old days you could send STEEM/SBD to @tipU and this would give you share in @tipU profits (or you could reinvest profit for the same effect). You could, and still can of course, also withdraw this investment at any time which means that I can not do anything with it. The liquid STEEM/SBD still sits in @tipU wallet and do does not generate any value.
I've decided to send back those investments and use STEEM POWER that was backing them to back @tipU tokens instead. I totally understand that many investors won't like it but please try to understand me - around 2000 SBD and 4000 STEEM currently sits in @tipU wallet, not generating any value and taking up 4000 @tipU STEEM POWER that would be otherwise used to back up @tipU tokens.
Please note that I'm not taking any fee here, all invested SBD / STEEM will be returned and I'm sure that for the good part of last 2 years they generated nice income for the users. Also it's just generally much safer to not keep other's people money in your own wallet.
Profitability Check
I was recently reminded about the profitability checks. Remember that you can always check it at: https://www.steemprofit.info
One thing to notice though - the results are not 100% accurate as the website calculates the ROI per day cycle. If we have a new day but the voting service hasn't send the payment yet, the ROI will be lower than the actual one. It can also work the other way round, where the ROI is a bit higher than the actual one. So, the presented ROI depends on the time of checking but usually @tipU does not drop lower than #2.