Demystifying HIVE: Utilise your Voting Power

Demystifying HIVE is a series of bite-sized posts targeted to new Hivians and for people outside of the HIVE blockchain.

The purpose is to try and break down the many complexities of the HIVE blockchain, its acronyms, and the current facts and falsehoods associated with it.

I say ‘current’ because within 6 months some of the things I say may well no longer be relevant. It is an evolving experiment, and little remains static.

It's little wonder that the retention rate is abysmal given the huge learning curve a new person needs to endure.

Without some guidance, most give up quite soon deeming it bewildering and over-complicated.

Other article's in this series:
Demystifying HIVE: Expectations
Demystifying HIVE: The Police Force
Demystifying HIVE: What are Witnesses?

So you joined HIVE, you created a few posts that have been largely ignored and you are about to give up?

Don’t you think I have NOT been in your situation? I can almost hear the murmurings, 'it's OK him saying this shit when he gets over $10 per post'.

I'm not here today to show you how to get more from your posts (that will be another day) but to gain the most from curation.

What is Curation?

There are TWO ways to earn HIVE. One is to produce content and the other to consume it.

We will talk today about consuming content, that is… reading stuff just like what you are reading now.

If you like it, then vote for it. If you are a new user and have little HIVE, vote 100% else you will likely get nothing back in terms of curation rewards.

...'if you are new to HIVE then it's unlikely you will have much Hive Power (HP). When clicking the heart to vote, use the slider and slide to 100% if you want any chance of earning a curation reward'...

You get rewarded by voting on the work of other content creators on HIVE. The amount of HIVE you will receive depends on several criteria.

How much HIVE Power you have
The weight of your vote
At what point in time you vote

Your HP (HIVE Power) directly dictates the level of HP you will receive when the post or comment pays out in conjunction with the other two aspects.

...'more HIVE Power means more curation rewards. HIVE is an effective investment platform if you look at it this way'...

Curation rewards are paid in HP.

I stated earlier if you have a small amount of HP then make sure your votes are always at 100% weight. You get 10 x 100% votes per day if you want to ensure your VP (Voting Power rejuvenates back to 100% in the next 24 hours).

...'keeping your VP between 80% - 95% is a good idea, mine is a little low right now'...

If you want to vote continuously, you can but each vote will have less value than the previous and this percentage statistic (above) will go down and down. This is to stop voting abuse.

This brings me to the final point and most confusing off all topic, ‘At what point in time you vote’

The Voting Window

Hopefully, the voting window will be gone in the next hard fork (HF25). There have been murmurings that it is on the way out, and I say good riddance. It is highly confusing and I always think simple is better.

When a post is created there is what you call a 5-minute window to get the most curation squeezed out of a post.

...'this post is only 3 minutes old. If I was to manually curate it, I would likely pause until it is 5 minutes old as it has zero votes. It should not have to be this way'...

Explaining this is not simple due to 'The Curve' which is another bugbear of mine but to try and simplify things, if you vote at 100% and also know your full vote is worth 20c, then when you vote dictates how much of a chunk of the curation reward you will receive.

After 5 minutes you will get 100% (20c weight)
Between 4 and 5 minutes, you will get 80% (16c weight)
Between 3 and 4 minutes, you will get 60% (12c weight)
Between 2 and 3 minutes, you will get 40% (8c weight)
Between 1 and 2 minutes, you will get 20% (4c weight)

The above example is highly simplistic and you might be thinking (I will vote after 5 minutes to get my full weight), but other factors are in play.

…’if you can vote before all the other bigger stakeholders then you will get much more in curation rewards’…

Confused? I would be, and this is the reason I loathe this vote window bullshit. It encourages you, the voter to try and vote earlier to gain more curation rewards... but not too early.

If you truly want large curation, find a fantastic post that has LESS than 4 votes, give it a full vote, re-hive it and hope that a curation group jumps on it and it moons to $20+.

...'LEO Finance has eliminated both the Vote Window and the Curve. You can vote when you like and your curation will be based off your stake size ONLY'...

This is not ideal, and if the 'vote window' gets axed (like it has on STEM and LEO), you can vote when you want and your curation reward is relative to your HP.

If that’s sentence makes no sense let me break it down.

Let’s imagine I vote on a post at 100% VP. In 7 days I will gain a curation reward. I have 156,884.29 HP available to me.

...'curation rewards can be viewed on https://hivetasks.com/@slobberchops. Replace my handle with yours'...

In our imaginary example, another curator (voter) votes the same post at exactly the same time has 15,688.429 HP available. That is 10% of my stake.

Both accounts were are 100% VP at the time of voting.

In 7 days, I get 3 HP in rewards; the other guy will get 0.3 HP in rewards.

Again this is a simplistic view of things as nothing on HIVE is simple, but I hope that explains things a little.

The Auto-Voters

There are free services you can use on HIVE to automate voting and make use of this ridiculous voting window.

...'hive.vote can be found at... yes.., hive.vote and is a popular auto-voter'...

I use hive.vote and have a list of 30 or so authors to which I issue votes too. Hive.vote is configurable, and you can enter the weight of your vote, and the time elapsed to try and play the curation game.

rewarding.app is a more powerful and configurable tool, but clunkier to use with less thought being put into the user interface.

If you decide to use either of these to gain more curation rewards, leave some of your voting power to manually curate. I do some every day and feel it’s important.

...'leave some spare VP for manual curation, you might miss something good, and meeting new potential good authors is good for HIVE growth'...

If you use 100% of your VP daily, then how can HIVE grow? New people appear and it's a case of, 'oh shit, I have no VP left to vote this award-winning post'.

Voting Power

You will have heard this term a lot, especially if you are reading this. VP starts at 100% and can go down to near zero if you abuse it.

It rejuvenates at around 2% per hour and will make it's way back up to 100%. If you leave it at 100% then you are wasting it resulting in a poorer APR.

...'hivestats.io is another tool to check your VP. This unnamed person is a purely passive voter and has a great APR yield. Don't be tempted to use these auto-voters 100% of the time'...

Make the most of your VP, and make sure it’s between 80% - 95% for full efficiency

I rarely allow mine to breach 80%, and if it does then I do no manual curation until it hits around 85%.

Some may say, ‘I have no time to manually curate’,- and that’s fine. You just read about Auto-Voters. Voting on something is better than wasting your VP.

Posts vs Comments

Did you know that when you comment on a post, you are creating your own post? The comment, just like a post is susceptible to that 'voting window' and votes on the comment will be paid just like a post, (50% HP / 50% HBD).

...'this is a comment reward though it says 'Author Reward', if you click the Permalink you can see which comment it hails from'...

If you cannot muster up a 2c vote then don't vote on comments (unless you have other reasons to do so). Anything less than 2c is considered a 'dust vote' and won't pay out anything.

If you comment, and someone up-votes your comment to a value above the dust-threshold (like ME), then you will gain an author reward in 7 days.

I ALWAYS vote on comments, that are genuine and not made of pure bullshit, spam, or say ‘nice post’. Othewise they may face the wrath of the Commentphant. Thanks @katharsisdrill for the humour, image and originality.

The Return on HIVE and Voting

Ever dabbled in the stock market? I have and dividends on a good company can get up to 5%. If they give out too much, the cash flow goes to shit, the price of the stock falls and then they cut the dividend.

HIVE gives a great return, just for voting. Mine is sitting at over 11%. Try and get that on the stock market.

...'your curation APR is relative to your voting habits. This unnamed person is not using his voting correctly and gains a crap return. It's your choice to get your rewards or not'...

If you have 66HP powered up, then you will get an 11% return on your 66HP. That’s over 6.6HP in a year.

Peanuts you say; Well what the fuck do you expect, free dinners?

I may be stupid enough to have a large stake of HIVE and most of it powered up but I reap the rewards of 40 - 50HP EVERY DAY.

...I think I do OK at between 11% and 12%. My curation is quite consistent, and don't look at the USD total. It's irrelevant unless you are planning to sell'...

That's money while I sleep. HIVE is a tangible currency, not monopoly money. It can be traded for BTC..., you know that 'thing' that is over $19,000 for ONE.

BTC can be traded for Euros, for Pounds, for Dollars.

Even if you can't write OR can't blog, you can invest. I like my 11% semi-passive return and if you have read any of what I have just written you can also have 11%..., just like me.