A New Dawn, A New Day... "HF21" Has Arrived!
And here we are. HF21 is full effect and the economics of the blockchain modified like never before. Free downvotes, 50/50 rewards and a seperate SPS pool. Yep, this is gonna be a wild ride! We did have a small technical hiccup for a little while in which a few idiots started screaming blue murder again, but that's to be expected I guess. No patience whatsaever. And besdies, how boring would it have been if everything went by smoothly? Oh yeah, this is only the beginning. The "real" drama is about to begin.
One thing that I was fully anticipating, as were all of you I'm sure, is a sustained full frontal assault on the "trending" page. God, how quickly us Steemians were to react on that count! A poor user by the name of @merlinmon7 was the unfortunate recipiant of the first attack. Worthy of a badge of honour, no less? The downvotes poured in as the message hit home loud and clear. We will not stand for bidbotted posts any longer. And the funny thing is, this was his first post ever, lol. It set a stark and open precedent as to how the behaviour of all on the platform will change from here on in.
As for the hardfork rewards, we all saw a dip in our VP as well as our paid out rewards. I'm already hearing many with lesser SP commenting in anger at the "unfairness" of this change. I'm not going to get pulled into that particular argument for one simple reason alone. This is the new way of things for Steemit now. The exit door is open for anyone who wishes to leave. No one is being forced to stay. And that includes every one of us. Will this lead to a mass exodus of users within the next few weeks or so? We'll just have to wait and see, I suppose.
I, for one, am gonna try to work "with" the new ruleset instead of "against" it. Right now, everyone is running around like headless chickens, attempting to figure out what's what with the new system in place. But give it about a month or so and this will be considered our standard operating environment. Literally time itself will take care of most of the issues we have now, post hardfork.
Otherwise, the implementation of "HF21" seems to have gone quite well. This is but another notch in the historical belt of STEEM. I'm predicting a lot of humanistic adjustment in the upcoming weeks. Lots of angry rants and pragmatic posts. Although I personally do not see many people leave. After all, where else are we gonna go? Nowhere else, that's where. Because for now, STEEM is the de facto option in the world of crypto-based social media. So let's band together and make the best of the situation regardless, eh?
