Unlike a centralized platform in which a moderator or a group of moderators moderates the content, here in Hive Blockchain every user is empowered to perform the role of a moderator which is further governed by a stake-weighted mechanism(Hive Power). More the Hive Power of a user, the more the influence to distribute the reward from the reward pool.
The one which publishes content is known as author and who votes content are known as curators. Curators play a vital role in content discovery. The consensus in the community is that good content should be upvoted and should be rewarding for authors. The spam, plagiarized content should be downvoted.
The post payout reflects a certain number in $ and that is as a result of the votes from the curators. The author and the curator(s) share the post payout in the ratio of 50:50. The post payout matures at 7 days. So at the end of the 7 days, the author's and curator's rewards are available for claim.
So in general, the curator(s) receive(s) 50% of the payout as curator reward.
If there is more than one curator then this 50% of the curator reward is distributed among the curators. At this point, a curator can optimize the curation reward based on time(age) of a post, the position of voting, how popular the post is, etc. So that is further pivoted with the rules of the curation.
The reward of a curator is always in Hive Power(HP).
Rules
Reverse Auction
In the reverse auction mechanism, the traditional reward of the curator(which is generally 50% ) is reversed with a defined voting window and that lost portion of the reward goes to the reward pool.
The voting window is 5 mins. So the reverse auction mechanism will remain in effect for 5 mins only. In effect, there is a linear discount on curation rewards from 100% to 0% over the voting time window of 5 mins.
The reverse auction is a tool to encourage human curation and aimed at preventing front-running of bots. Generally, most of the posts are 800-1200 words post which takes 5 mins to read. So this 5 min reverse auction has been designed in such a way that by the time a curator read and value a post by upvoting, the 5 mins would be over. So this reverse auction window reduces the cognitive load of timing an upvote for human curators and at the same time taxing for the bots.
If a curator will vote at 1 min age of a post, then he will give up 80% of his curation reward-- In other words, he will get 10% curation reward as opposed to 50% curation reward)
If a curator will vote at 2 mins age of a post, then he will give up 60% of his curation reward- In other words, he will get 20% curation reward as opposed to 50% curation reward)
If a curator will vote at 5 mins age of a post, then he will get 100% of his curation reward as the reverse auction will cease at 5 mins age of the post.
The lost reward of the curator due to early voting within the voting window(5 mins) goes to the reward pool and redistributed again in the community through the PoB mechanism.
Vote before a whale
A curator can optimize his curation reward if he votes before a whale. Generally, popular posts attract whale's upvote. The whales have the highest influence power of distributing the reward from the reward pool.
So engineering the "timing of voting" of a popular post(potentially highly rewarding) is a tricky task. You could lose a portion of your curation reward if you vote within the reverse auction window and you could gain if you are the early voter of the post and if your vote follows a whale's upvote.
The early voter's gain of curation reward is somewhat like this graph.
So it very clear that the early voters are at an advantage should the post be a popular one and the whales upvote such a post.
Convergent linear reward
The reward curve in Hive Blockchain is "Convergent linear". The mathematical function of a convergent linear reward is f(x)= x*x/(x+1).
The implication of a convergent linear reward is that for smaller input, the output is much lower and as the input value increases the output also betters & the input to output ratio gradually reduces, and ultimately, for much higher inputs, the output tends to be the same as the input. It is evident from the following table.
With convergent linear reward if the input "x" is "HP" or "rshares", then f(x)= x*x/(x+1). So for lower "rhares", the output, means the post payout is much lesser and as the total curated value of "rshares" increases, the payout value also betters and ultimately for much larger "rshares", it becomes almost linear.
In essence, the "convergent linear reward" function offers that momentum to better content discovery. An isolated curator with the same HP may not get yield better upvote value, but the same can get better value if he curates in line with the community where everyone feels a particular "content" a good one to upvote and reward. So an isolated curator becomes a community curator in that sense.
With the convergent linear reward, the community can collectively curate the really good posts in a true sense and help the curators gain the linear reward which is not possible if they remain isolated. The users also do away from self-upvoting as that is taxing, instead, curate good & popular posts to get better curation reward.
One can improve the curation efficiency and can get more than 50% of his upvote value as curation reward by engineering the "upvote position and timing" with the combined effect of "reverse auction", "vote before a whale" and "convergent linear reward".
Voitng Power & Voting Weight
There is voting mana you can check from Hiveblocks.com/@username which regenerates every day by 20%, with the maximum voting mana 100%. So if you vote a post with full voting weight(100%) then it will deplete by 2%.
So to start with 100% voting mana, if you vote with 100% voting weight, then it will deplete by 2%, so the new voting mana will be 98%. So when voting next at 98% with full weight then it will again deplete by 2% of the voting mana. So the new voting mana will be (98-(98*0.02))= 96.04%. And so on.....
With voting weight less than 100%, the depletion of voting mana will be proportional to the percentage weight that is selected before voting.
The user with HP below 500HP is not given an option of voting weight, for them every time they vote the voting weight is 100%. With HP more than 500, you can see slider next to your upvote button when you try to upvote. So you can adjust your slider and select a voting weight(e.g. 30% or 40% or 70%) and then upvote.
In essence, considering the voting mana regenerates by 20% every day, a user can upvote 10 times a day at full voting mana with full voting weight, precisely every 2.4 hours. If you adjust your voting weight(anything less than 100% voting weight) you can vote more than 10 times a day.
If you want to keep 80% Voting mana as the threshold for the day, then at full voting weight you can have 12 votes per day.
If you want to vote at full voting mana and full voting weight, then you get 10 times to vote in a day with such a combination as every time you vote at full voting mana and full vote weight, the voting mana will deplete by 2% and to recharge that 2% it will take 2.4 hrs. So every 2.4 hrs you can vote at 100% voting mana and 100% voting weight.
Most of the users generally vote till 80% of their voting mana every day as it will recharge by 20% every day, so the next day they can again start with 100%. For optimal use of voting mana, this is recommended. However there is no such rule, if you don't care about your voting mana and want to go on a voting spree, you can do that and deplete your voting mana below 80%.
Please keep in mind that higher voting weight, higher voting mana will result in higher upvote value with the maximum upvote value being at 100% voting mana and 100% voting weight. You can always check your upvote value from this tool by entering your HP, voting power, and voting weight.
Posting limits
You can post every 5 mins. By that rule theoretically, you can post 12 posts every hour. However if someone is doing that, then literally he/she is spamming the Blockchain.
A good author generally posts twice or thrice a day. To produce quality content it takes time, effort, etc and that is why a quality content is potentially rewarding for the authors.
Further, how many posts, comments, votes, transfers, etc you can make is governed by the "resource credits" that you have.
Resource Credits
These are non-transferrable credits directly coupled with your Hive Power. This also regenerates every day by about 22% roughly. You can check the resource credits manabar at Hiveblocks.com/@username
Maximum RCs(Resource Credits) is proportional to the vested Hive tokens.
The different resource types that are taken into consideration are- Blockchain size, State size, Computational load. The price of each resource is based on the current level of the stockpile. If the stockpile decreases the price increases and vice versa. So it's very dynamic in nature. The resource credits that you have, you can always check in Hiveblocks.com/@username. You can also get to know how many posts, comments, votes, transfers that you can make. For every type of operation, how much RCs will be consumed that is also very clearly mentioned in Hiveblocks.com.
In general, a 20HP Hive account is sufficient to post a blog, comment, vote, transfers, etc and engage in Hive Blockchain without worrying about the shortfall of RCs.
Thank you.
Where ever Hiveblocks.com/@username is written, please replace "username" with a valid Hive username or your Hive username to check.
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