Today I would like to talk about recent self upvote activities I have conducted on myself. Before we go forward with the discussion, I would like to emphasize again, I don't usually upvote myself unless the community trail that I'm following upvoted me, and the trail bot took myself to upvote myself with 4%. How stupid is that, isn't it?

So, I conduct a small experiment on myself over the past few days. Here's what I found.

Specimen 1

A full 100% upvote was done to my own post at about 30 minutes after article being posted. A total of 0.0506SBD went back to my post. Let's talk about curation reward. By right 25% of 0.506 is supposed to be 0.0126SBD. That should translate to 0.0275SP! Where is my 0.01SP gone? I don't know, someone who upvoted my post before I do? If not, how do you think Steem pay the extra curation reward to the early birds?

Specimen 2

Here's another one. I made an upvote on my own post after the early bird burning window. Total 0.0513SBD went to my post. Curation reward of 25% supposed to be 0.0128SBD, that should translate to 0.0278SP. Again, I'm only getting back 0.019. Where is the rest? Correct, it has to come from the people from behind, to reward the early bird. In order to be the early bird, partial of the curation reward has to be burn!

Possible curation rewards upvoting others

The list can go on and on and on. I reduced my voting power to 4%, so I can support the community, but the same time I get a small benefit of curation rewards!

How does it make sense?

Self full upvote

Let's get down to numbers and calculations. A full 100% upvotes, took 2% of voting power. My full 100% upvote worth about 0.05SBD. Curation reward is supposed to be 25%, and I am eSteem supporter, but that took away 10% beneficiaries. so there goes another 0.005SBD. My actual take home is less than 0.045SBD(considering nobody upvote my post before me)

To upvote others

Had I break my upvotes down to 4%, which means the same 2% voting power actually allows me to upvote 25 times! As you can see from the above screenshots, my potential curation reward has been consistently stay above what I send out(which is 0.002). Let's take a conservative approach. What if we always get back 0.002SP? So it will be 0.002 * 25 times = 0.05SP. Don't get carried away, this is only SP, if we convert it back to SBD, we are only getting back 0.023SBD. If we were to be benefit from curation reward, we need to make sure the return is atleast a fold of what we sent out. In this case, we need the best case scenario, everytime we sent 0.002SBD out, we expect to collect back 0.004SP * 25 times = 0.10SP and shall translate as 0.046SBD. Which is just about 0.001 difference compare to self upvote.

Difficult decision

With this study, we can clearly see self upvote is much less hassle in getting back almost all the vests. Per day we are entitled to utilize 20% of the voting power. Unless one can make 10 posts and self upvote 10 times, then you're literally make the best out of it, but you'll be seen milking the system. Why not spread some love to the community you love? Trail their votes whilst you're away. Break it down into smaller pieces, but make sure the vest wasn't too small until curation reward gets forfeited.

I am not the most successful curator, as I am required to do my job. Sometimes I had a quota to meet and I will have to lower my voting power to 2.5%(0.001), which earn absolutely nothing for me. But, having extra 3.4SP a week, that's like 1.564SBD right now! I had to create 35 posts and do 35 times full upvote in a week! 5 posts a day! Who does that?!🤣

Summary

I learn from many friends, to tame the stubborn me down. There is no right or wrong in self upvote. Purposely creating 10 posts a day just to perform self upvote, that will turn a lots of head. But other than the one or two posts a day, why not optimize your voting power and benefit others whilst earn some curation reward? I am currently tagging to #wherein #teammalaysia trail. I will try to upvote myself more often! But trust me, I will preserve my voting power to upvote the community as well.