Voting Power and the Associative Property of Multiplication

Welcome back for another episode of SBI Sustainability! Today I want to address the oft misunderstood math behind voting power. This topic is close to my heart because I, @ecoinstant, did not understand it and had taken it upon myself to misinform others. In this article I will attempt to rectify my misdeeds and reclaim my honor.

_{Logo design by @ecoinstante}

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Do You Know what Steem Basic Income is?

Steem Basic Income is a social experiment to bring a basic income to as many Steemians as possible. Members join by sponsoring others into the program. Steem Basic Income is delivered through providing regular upvotes to member content.

Check out our Frequently Asked Questions!

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Keep your voting power high!

I was told, and it made some sense, that I should always ‘keep my voting power high’. This allowed for the highest max voting value, and this is true. We have probably all noticed our vote value fall over time as we explore the site and vote on more and more articles.

Because each vote is worth less, we might be excused for thinking that we are ‘wasting value’ by driving our voting power into the lower end of the spectrum. But when we dig a bit deeper into the math, we can see that the total value distributed over a period of time actually doesn’t move. This is due to an interesting application of the associative property of multiplication, which you may have learned in school. If you don’t remember, don’t fret, because today we will review everything you need to know!

Low votes don’t use as much voting power

The associative property of multiplication basically states that we can multiply numbers in any order and always get the same results. Here is a quick refresher video from Sal Khan of Khan Academy:

This is important when we think about Voting Power because we can think about voting power as a type of ‘slider’ that controls how powerful our votes are. A 50% vote at 100% voting power is worth exactly the same as a 100% vote at 50% voting power, given the same Steem Power.

Currently our Voting Power stands at 20.25%, which is very low. We now are voting on many members with the full complement of 10 accounts. Our maximum deliverable upvote value per post has been diminished, as a 100% upvote at 20% is equivalent to a 20% upvote at 100%. Our daily or weekly total deliverable value is at a record high.

Members that cannot get the full 20% of their rshares balance on each post will continue to accumulate their balance - only the rshares actually voted are removed. Then as our maximum upvote value per post increases, their actual upvote values will increase - until our maximum upvote value finally exceeds their pending upvote value again and their vote size will be limited by 20% of their pending value again instead of limited by our maximum upvote size.

Sustainability Impact

Along with the topics we have discussed in previous weeks, I hope you can see that our voting power is low precisely because it is more sustainable for our program than leasing SP at elevated rates. We chose to let our VP fall instead of overpaying for expensive delegation. When we evaluate Steem Power leases, they are over 24 weeks to get the best possible rates. We are always very careful to check the math, to make sure that we make the right steps each and every day.

Writer Bio

This Sustainability report was prepared for us by @ecoinstant.

From a young age, @ecoinstant continues to be very interested in the mechanisms of sustainability, and loves being a part of several teams working on promising projects, including the marvelous Steem Basic Income!

Sustainability Coverage and VP Management

Sustainability Coverage is currently at 81.38% and rshares reward rate is 651,003,760 per SBI unit per day. This is another improvement from yesterday and we will see even more improvement soon as the last of our Conversion losses drop out of the seven-day calculation period.

The rshares reward rate for bonus units (delegation reward) is not decreased, and you can help increase the sustainability coverage (and thus the rshares reward rate on regular units) by delegating to @steembasicincome.
For more information, please read Into the Heart of Sustainability.

Upvoting Reward multipliers are currently at 1.10x on regular updates and on secondary accounts and comments, until our voting power (VP) recovers to 80%.

Questions?

Please read our FAQ. If you still have questions, ask in the comments section or join us in our discord channel.

You can look up your current membership levels by using !sbi status in a comment or post, or by using our newly modified member lookup tool.