Less posts, so more rewards for the ones that do post?
If you hoping to find out the answer to this question then think again!
I don’t know the answer either and I’m hoping some more experienced Steemers can respond.
Source
So I hear the comment, ‘The price of STEEM is at a 3 month low, and there’s less posts’, followed by, ‘Well the ones who do will get more rewards as the pool does not have to distribute its offerings so broadly now’.
If on Monday there are 800 posts, but on Tuesday only 50 posts. How do those Tuesday posters benefit from a bigger chunk of the pool?
Taking the above scenario:
If I post on Monday and gain a cumulative voting reward of $1 for my efforts, and do the same on Tuesday gaining the same $1 what would be the difference for me?
I’m just not seeing it, and I’m sure it’s not just me who doesn’t understand this.
If you found this article so invigorating that you are now a positively googly-eyed, drooling lunatic with dripping saliva or even if you liked it just a bit, then please upvote, comment, resteem, engage me or all of these things.
I think it's like if there is £50 in the pot - on Monday, that's shared by 800 posts at £1, and on Tuesday it's shared by 50 posts at £1, so the £1 is nominal in each case, it's a representation of the share of the pot, rather than the actual value.
But I'm also thinking - less people posting, less people voting. So like you, I don't really get it.
Maybe we need to ask someone like @tcpolymath.
I come when summoned...
Well, here's an easy way to think about it - presume that the same people voted on the 800 posts and on the 50 posts. Suddenly there are 750 posts worth of votes that have to be redistributed somehow among the 50 that exist. People like me have more voting power, because fewer of the posts we usually vote on are being produced, so we can upvote posts like this one.
Now, if the voting also goes way, way, down, something similar happens, because the amount of Steem to distribute to posters at any give time remains constant. When you vote at $0.01, it's not actually one cent. Your vote is a particular percentage of the rewards available, and the system predicts that percentage will be worth one cent based on recent voting patterns. If the prediction is wrong - because somehow 15/16 of the votes suddenly stop being used - the actual reward can change. Practically, voting patterns don't ever change this dramatically though. It's mostly the first effect that matters.
Thank you
Thanks for the explanation, I thought the $0.01 was a value that fluctuates depending on the Steem value and not the size of the available rewards pool.
I have noticed that when Steem is down in value my full vote is also reduced, but this statement is still a little confusing to me:
'People like me have more voting power, because fewer of the posts we usually vote on are being produced, so we can upvote posts like this one.'
Are you saying that if on Tuesday when many less posts are sent out and thus many less votes are cast that my VP is greater, or that the $0.01 vote I cast, when payed out will actually be greater in terms of SP/SBD/Vesting rewards?
It does both. Outside of very weird voting behavior the fluctuation based on Steem price will be much larger.
In that case, neither. What I'm saying is that I have the same about of voting power to use every day no matter how many posts are made. So if there are a lot fewer posts for me to read, there is a lot less demand for my vote, which means it will go places that it wouldn't necessarily if there was more competition. This tends to be pretty true for most users who manually vote. It means it's easier for a post to attract our attention and our votes.
Typically even though posting volume goes up and down the voting volume remains pretty stable. So if there are fewer posts there are more votes out there that have to go somewhere.
This would be the case if the voters decide they MUST vote on those 50 posts to simply use up some of their VP, but if all them decided that each and every post was not worthy, and their VP all went to 100%, what then?
The reward pool fills and overflows? Sorry for all the questions... just interested in how it all works.
Sort of. Basically every time someone sits at 100% the portion of rewards that would otherwise be assigned to them as voting power gets assigned proportionally across all the active upvotes. This is also what happens if you vote on a declined reward post. If you flag it's twice as effective - your vote and the vote you canceled both go to inflating the pool a little bit.
This is a good thing.
Interesting, so the 100% VP person loses their potential to gain rewards and other get what they are losing. I will have to let a friend of mine know this, as he continually wastes his VP.
Exactly. (Now go look at @steemit's wallet and think about what it means that they never vote.)
It's actually a bit more complicated and doesn't directly on the number of posts. What matters is the Steem price and the total value of all votes cast within the last 7 days.
On each block (every 3 seconds) a predefined amount of STEEM is added to the reward pool based on the current network inflation rate. The value of each vote is internally calculated in
rshares. The more SP/VP/% you have/use for the vote, the morersharesyour vote gets. You can see this value for example on steemd:If your post reaches payout after 7 days, the sum of all vote
rshareson your post is set in relation to the sum of all votershareson all posts that were cast in the last 7 days. The payout for your post is thensum(your_rshares) / sum(all_rshares) * reward_pool_size, which is divided between the author (you) and the curators (your voters).To summarize: more or less posts do not necessarily mean more or less rewards for you. It depends on several factors.
Thanks for your explanation, nothing is ever simple on here is it?
I've been wondering the same thing when people try to breakdown the reward pool and how it pays out. Doesn't it only pay if people are using their voting power?? I'm confused for sure.. Do another post if you do figure it out..
There is a decent question and answer in this post courtesy of @tcpolymath
Now Steem has gone down even further, I'm seeing even less posts than when I wrote this.
I have heard more people say that it is harder to get upvotes now because there are so many people on the platform and there is less STEEM to go around to all of those people/posts.
I'm not so sure about that, I have more VP than usual because there's less worthy content to vote on. My vote is worth less though for sure.
Yeah I guess that is a good point. Maybe one day it will all turn around!