HardFork 21 | Gameplan & Predictions

Hardfork 21 will be released tomorrow around 16:00 Belgian time and a lot will change so time to make a new gameplan and make some predictions how I think things will go down...

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Current Gameplan

I've been on Steemit for over 2 years now. The plan since the start has always been to have a blog that in a way helps my personal betting with the potential to earn a bit of stable income over time with affiliate earnings and post rewards by being invested in the platform. This along with being able to find like-minded people really has made Steemit work for me so far.

I have something close to a 1-post-a-day routine and try to be very consistent in it always keeping up the quality often feeling like a fool putting effort into posts since, in the end, it doesn't really have any influence on post earnings at least the way things currently work.

Right now, I honestly only follow a couple of accounts of friends and fellow sports bettors and only make replies when I really have something to add. I'm using Steemauto to do most of my upvoting and at times make a manual upvote while votes get sold using Minnowbooster once my VP gets too high. If anything, time for me is the biggest enemy and this way of going about things really helps in this regard.

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Gameplan Adjustment

Blogging
One of my main concerns with HF21 is the non-linear reward curve and the fact that post-earnings need to reach a certain point to reach linear. Things seem to have shifted more toward the tribes these days and I plan on using the coins I earn to get upvotes from the tribe upvote bots that help reduce the supply. Nearly all my post will contain 3 Tribes. [ sportstalk | pal | steemleo ] and I plan to increase my stake on all of them. Right now I have

Tribe	Staked
Sportstalk	150000 SPORTS
PAL	517 PAL
Steemleo	200 LEO

The upvotes from these earned coins along with the daily @steemmonsters upvotes I buy daily for ~500 DEC and hopefully some manual curation might get me close to the linear rewards on my daily post also making them more attractive for curators to upvote.

Growing Account
I don't have any financial issues, so I am reinvesting pretty much everything I earn on Steem growing my account as I have been doing for a while. I will continue to do so and spread things around based on what I believe has potential (Steemmonsters, my @upvoteshares project, Sportstalk at low price, PAL, new games that come around, ...). I'm also tempted to buy more Steem at current prices but probably need some evidence of new people coming in first. 10.000SP is the goal I want to reach right now.

Curation
The different tribes make auto curation a lot harder as it's hard to utilize all the voting power efficiently. I hope one day this gets fixed otherwise I might get an extra account just to make a sportstalk upvote list. From what I understand, voting on posts that get low rewards will become impossible (too high of a risk) because of the non-linear reward curve. I plan to refresh my auto-upvote list mostly getting accounts on there that post consistent quality content (mostly Sports-Related), are invested into the platform for the long run and expect to reach the Linear rewards point. I will start using steempeak making lists there and do regular manual curation also trying to engage a bit more on the content I actually like. So the ones that haven't managed to get anything going really on Steem that are now on my list will likely lose out.

Flagging
I don't plan to actively look for posts to flag and use my daily downvotes. If there are group initiatives that mass downvote clear abuse I will be happy to help out also downvoting. If friends get flagged unjustified I will help retaliate if possible. If I get downvoted by someone I'll probably downvote back or get triggered and do nothing about it if it's impossible.

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HARDFORK 21 PREDICTIONS

• Something will go wrong
  Hardfork 20 was a small disaster where voting powers got completely drained and it being impossible to use the blockchain right after. These hardforks rarely go without bugs and I would not be surprised to see some issues again.

• Flagging Wars
  If anything, getting downvoted brings out the most primitive side in people as it is a big emotional trigger. Not everyone likes everyone and it's inevitable that old grudges will be settled with some of them probably escalating making Steem a less friendly place at least the first few months.

• Curation won't increase much
  I don't really believe there will be more random upvotes by curators on posts. It's still more efficient and profitable to 'upvote4upvote' or upvote content you know will get more upvotes compared to going out of your way actively looking for 'quality content' upvoting it hoping more upvotes will come in. Unless you are somehow inside 'curation circles' don't expect too much from this new 50/50 model. I do hope to get on some more curator auto-votes as I'm extremely consistent in my blogging. What I blog about is pretty niche though so I don't expect all too much.

• Less (Empty Shit) Posts
  Right now the most profitable thing to do is to have around 5-7 quick posts daily since rewards are linear and even small upvotes count equally. This way of going about things probably won't get you anywhere in HF21 which is a good thing. They might remain for the ones that try milking the tribe upvotes though.

• Better Trending Page
  It will be impossible to buy bad posts to the top of trending because they will get downvoted. So the trending page should improve giving Steem Inc more views and more advertisement revenue which to me always seemed the purpose for the HF.

• Bid Bots will find a way
  I don't think passive return bid bots will die and they will likely find a way to keep going one way or another.

• Few Reasons to Hold SP
  The 50/50 reward split won't give enough reasons to power up and hold SP as long as there are more efficient ways to get returns. It will still be better to invest in Steemmonsters cards, tribe tokens or delegating out Steem to get some return instead of actually using it to upvote.content. I do intend to keep most of my steem undelegated to give upvotes but I'll see how it plays out.

• Less engagement
  The low Steem price already caused lower engagement simply because it's harder to get rewarded for it. (that's the way it works, unfortunately). Non-linear rewards will make comment upvotes impossible so I expect even less engagement in general.

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That's about it, I'm not as negative about HF21 as I used to be when first hearing about it but I'm not sure it will help the price go up anytime soon. In the end, there are still too few reasons to invest in Steem aside from 'being able to get more steem' which has a high Ponzi feel to it all. The selling pressure also will continue to be quite high until new people come in to give it some relief. It doesn't feel like we are quite there yet though.

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Feel free to leave your thoughts and predictions on the hardfork in the comments...