The results are in! Running your VP down makes your votes worth less, but you get more of them! The net result is no change to the payouts you allocate to content-creators, nor to how much you earn in curation rewards. This goes against most conventional thinking on BLURT, and has implications for how we all manage our curation strategies!
Related posts:
- The Timing of Curation
- The 20 biggest manual curators on Blurt
- How does Voting Power really affect curation rewards on Blurt? Help me find out!
Quick summary:
- I calculated the top 20 curators on Blurt using their Blurt Power and their average Voting Power
- MK (Blurt's #1 manual curator) commented that VP has very little effect on curation rewards
- I did preliminary testing and calculations, and discovered that a full vote reduces VP by 2% of current amount, not an absolute 2% as previously believed
- I ran a larger experiment to find out what happens at much lower VP (such as 50%)
Results
Thank you to everyone who commented on my last post on this topic, giving me targets for dozens of 100% upvotes, and allowing me to drain my VP down to 50% and below.
My hypothesis was: "At about 50% VP, considering 20% linear healing, and a 2% drop from the current value with each full vote, I will be able to give out TWENTY votes at 100% strength every day - instead of the usual ten - without overall depletion of my Voting Power. Granted, it appears that my votes will be worth about half what they are when my VP is near 100%, meaning around 25 BLURT each instead of the usual 50. But if I'm able to give out twice as many, that means I'll still be handing out the same amount of payouts, and earning the same amount of curation rewards."
It actually took longer (more voting) than I thought, but I finally made it below the half-way point. I then allowed my VP to heal until it was exactly 50.00%:
I dished out the full upvote (100% weight), refreshed my browser, and found another comment to vote on. This gave me the result I had predicted:
A full vote only used 1% of my Voting Power! I'm used to maintaining my VP in the high 90s, where full votes drain VP by (almost) 2%.
Also note that the value of my full vote is about 26 BLURT, down 50% from where it was the other day when I was fully charged:
MK (@mariuszkarowski) is absolutely right!
After calculating that VP reduces by 2% of the remaining amount (not a nominal 2%), I had the missing piece of the puzzle, and from there everything has gone as expected. (Hypothesis confirmed.)
Conclusions
At about 50% VP, we can expend 20 full votes per day without draining ourselves any lower. As we all know, when maintaining VP near full, we can only do 10. The total amount of BLURT we are allocating to content (and earning in curation rewards) is unchanged, but at lower VP we are spreading it out over more content. This has pros and cons.
At 10% VP, we can do 100 full votes every day! Of course, they're pretty small at that point.
At 1% VP, we could theoretically vote (at full 100% weight) 1000 times a day! Unless we have a massive amount of BP, the votes will be microscopic. In fact, as @logiczombie pointed out on my last post, the fees for voting would be onerous, making it financially unfeasible.
My previous assertion that good curation involves maintaining VP as close to 100% as possible (without sitting on full and wasting votes) was wrong. My "Timing of Curation" post still has a lot of valid information, but that part is completely invalidated by the fact that VP actually goes down by 2% of the current level. Now that I (and we) understand that properly, I will remake that post in the coming days.
I also intend to redo my "top 20 curators" post soon, negating the calculations around voting power, now that it is confirmed to have no effect on curation rewards!
Essentially, most of us don't need to worry about our Voting Power! Smaller curators (accounts with less BLURT powered up) should probably still aim to keep their VP fairly topped up, to keep fees as proportionally low as possible, and to avoid having to spend hours every day finding enough content to expend all their votes on. But medium and larger curators shouldn't watch their VP much at all - other than to ensure it isn't sitting at full (being wasted), of course.
My gratitude to everybody who pitched in with comments, information, and suggestions. And thank you to MK for challenging the status quo! I think this was a valuable exercise. It will change the way I curate, dramatically. I hope you've found it just as enlightening!
DRutter
lol 😄 - I just left you the comment on your previous post and now came across this one.
However, here I would like to emphasize another thing, the so-called dust.
I don't know how this is handled on BLURT blockchain, but keeping in mind that BLURT blockchain scrip is actually an adapted version of the HIVE blockchain script, I wouldn't be surprised that the dust "issue" actually exists here too.
So, what is dust, and what I'm actually talking about?!
From my point of view and understanding, on BLURT blockchain, it would be, if nothing, any and every amount of BLURT from the 4th decimal place on, as BLURT has only 3 decimals.
For instance, on the HIVE blockchain, the dust is every amount of HIVE lower than 0.030 HIVE.
What that actually means is the following.
When the total amount of earnings on the post or comment is lower than 0.030 HIVE on the payment day/time (7 days or 168 hours after it was published) that amount (0.029 and lower) would be dusted, and nobody would earn anything (neither author nor the curator).
As I said earlier, I don't know how this is set on BLURT blockchain, but if that part of the script has not been changed and just copied and pasted from HIVE (open source) script, taking care of it would be important.
It's not something that should concern you personally as you have enough PB (Blurt Power) that even if your VP *(Voting Power) is at 50% and you decide to give just 1% upvote, it would still be something above 0.250 BLURT.
But it's extremely important for new members and those with smaller BP (Blurt Power) accounts.
And when I say smaller accounts, I'm talking about those who have less than 500 or even 600 BP in stake on their accounts, as their 100% vote at 100% power is worth about 0.030 BLURT.
So, if such member whose (100%/100%) upvote is worth less than 0.030 BLURT upvotes someone else's comment (or post, although, with posts, it's less likely to happen), and that comment (or post) has not been upvoted by anyone else before neither after (to increase the total earning above the dust margin), that vote is going to be wasted, and that small earning dusted.
I hope I managed to explain this dust thing well enough?!
However, to conclude...
In my opinion, draining the Voting Power below 80%, the same as giving lower upvotes than 100% - it's not for everyone!
There are many factors involved in the equation that should be taken into consideration, and the result would be different for each of us depending on how big or small our accounts are in terms of BP (Blurt Power).
It's never too late to learn! I had no idea about this, and in my opinion it is good to know these details that, by ignoring them, we miss the target of making our accounts grow efficiently.
There's no "dusting" on Blurt, Ray, so even extremely small rewards are paid out to the creator and curators : )
Ana-maria was thinking of a policy on Hive that was never implemented on Blurt.
I understood that, my dear friend. I just didn't know it and my voting power in Hive was microscopic because I had it delegated almost entirely. I've removed some delegations, and I'm reviewing my curation APR progress.
If you already knew that, why did you say "I had no idea about this" and "it's good to know these details"?
You could have told ana-maria that she was wrong, and explained to her why. But it's okay, I have done that now (see my detailed comment above).
I think I'm using the translator wrong.
I know there is no dust in Blurt, (I learned that from you) but I didn't know how it worked in Hive completely (it's what I didn't). Not only that, but I didn't know that "dusts" were lost in Hive.
I guess that's what they call payouts under $0.02 USD.... "dust"... on Steem and Hive they are put back into the reward pool. On Blurt they are paid out to the creator and curators : )
Hi ana-maria, thanks for your comment. However, Blurt does not "dust" rewards. All payouts, no matter how small, are awarded to the creator (50%) and curators (50%). Throwing away small payouts on Blurt would not make sense - or be possible - because we pay a fee for everything, including curation. Once a post or comment has any amount of pending rewards, unless all curators remove their votes, the payout will occur. We have no downvotes, and no "dusting" on Blurt. : )
I can demonstrate:
There's a comment of mine from 7 days ago, just before it paid out.
There it is AFTER it paid out, showing the same amount (0.29 BLURT for creator and 0.29 BLURT for curators).
At that exact moment, this 0.29 BLURT payment arrived in my wallet (25% in liquid BLURT and 75% in BP).
You're still right that smaller accounts are generally better off not running their VP way down, which is why my article says "Smaller curators (accounts with less BLURT powered up) should probably still aim to keep their VP fairly topped up, to keep fees as proportionally low as possible, and to avoid having to spend hours every day finding enough content to expend all their votes on."
Great analysis. Let's get out the vote!
I am happy about your achievement, my dear friend. I read between the lines that you feel proud for having achieved what few, or hardly anyone, dare to do, which is to thoroughly investigate the origin and development of things, in this case, the relationship between Vp and healing.
My question would be this: What healing strategy will be your guide? I imagine that you will also put it to the test, and will do the necessary follow-up for at least a week.
Thanks Ray : )
I didn't really intend to heal my VP back to 99%, but I did. I took a couple days off completely, and then for the next day just voted what I found to be extremely-high quality content. But in future I probably won't feel the need to keep my VP up in the 90s very often.
Thanks for the time you put into this! I try not to get under 70% VP, but mine is a lite account, less than 40k blurt.
Good analysis. I discovered something of recent. Anytime I claim my post payout after seven days I discovered that the one going to the blurt power usually get reduce base on the amount of blurt that am claiming.
I don't know if you notice it or if have an answer to my question
I think what you're seeing and talking about is a fee for claiming payouts. Everything on Blurt has a fee. As you grow you will come to see them as a "cost of doing business", more or less.
Have a great day, friend!
Good to know. I overvote constantly and have wonders about this.
Thanks for running the voting power experiment and reporting on your findings.
That was an interesting experiment. That's good news for people like me who binge upvote, yes!
I sometimes drain my VP down to 70/75%... I will continue doing that! On the next day it is mostly almost back to 100%... 👍
That's why, we call:"Many Men, Many Minds". You have brought an unique experiment.
Curated by @ultravioletmag
Congratulations, your post has been curated by @dsc-r2cornell. You can use the tag #R2cornell. Also, find us on Discord
Felicitaciones, su publicación ha sido votada por @ dsc-r2cornell. Puedes usar el tag #R2cornell. También, nos puedes encontrar en Discord