With nearly 31,000,000 Steem Power, UPVU is by far the most powerful user on Steemit. By comparison, steemcurator01 has just under 10,000,000.
I'm sure you're familiar with UPVU but here's a brief introduction anyway (most of you can skip down to "Why Do Some Users Dislike UPVU Then")....
What is UPVU?
UPVU is a service which you delegate your power to and in return, they will upvote 1 of your posts every day. In addition, you'll also receive additional Steem in the form of a Wallet Transfer. If you don't write a post, you get a larger Transfer but this will have a lower value than the rewards from the upvote.
The reward from this single vote will eclipse the equivalent that you'd get through self-voting so as far as maximising your returns (your ROI), it's in your interests to submit 1 post per day, every day.
So it's great for the investor and there's currently no better ROI available on Steemit.
Beyond Investment
So it's great for investors and the rewards from these upvotes are occasionally put to good use. Some Steemit users use these rewards to provide prizes for contests - redistributing a proportion to the community.
Why Do Some Users Dislike UPVU Then?
As mentioned above, for investors it's great. It can be used as a "savings account" and can provide an impressive ROI.
For the community though, things look very different.
The Inability To Curate
If users delegate their power to UPVU, their votes to other authors is lessened and as many delegate 100% of their power, their upvotes are worth nothing.
It's possible that if these users didn't delegate their power, they'd have little incentive to stay on the platform and wouldn't upvote others anyway. So in this regard, it's pretty much a null-sum game. If anything, their power remaining on the platform props up the price of Steem and makes those that do upvote others more valuable - although their receipt of upvotes reduces the reward pool so even this element is debatable.
The Necessity To Post Something... Anything...
There are many accounts that write their daily post. A picture of a coin... a tank... anything. They're here to maximise their returns and this is the only requirement to do so. The community sees this picture of a tank earn $10 and think "I know, I'll post a picture of a tank too" and then wonder why their tank is worth nothing.
Since the only requirement is to post something, there's no incentive to engage with the community. To add the "Social" into this "Social Media".
Engagement reduces... the sense of community reduces... the motivation to post good quality content and support others reduces... Newcomers who join "to get rich" are unable to do so. Shame. Newcomers who join to get some emotional fulfilment from their interaction with others quickly realise that the community is actually quite small. This fulfilment is difficult to accomplish but it is possible - I'm still here but there are many that aren't.
Then there's this - of the most powerful 1,000 users, 75% of their power is delegated which is where much of UPVU's 31,000,000 comes from. Which means that there aren't many users with the power to manually curate and highlights the importance of the work that the Steemit team are doing through steemcurator and booming support. But I'm not here to suck up to Steemit, I'm here to share a point of view so let's get to it...
Opinion: Steemit Is Becoming UPVU
UPVU's growth is far quicker and more significant than any other user. We're not far off the point at which UPVU will have more voting power than all of Steemit's accounts combined. This doesn't sound important but given the shared reward pool, as UPVU's relative voting power increases, Steemit's relative voting power decreases.
Assuming a constant price of Steem, a steemcurator01 upvote today could be worth $10... this time next week $9.99... the week after $9.98... you get the picture. Whereas the equivalent UPVU vote will be worth $10... $10.01... $10.02...
In time, the consequence of this is inevitable. To earn any rewards, you MUST delegate to UPVU. Steemit is full of investors. Steemit is UPVU.
Can Steemit Stop This?
It can... other than the obvious outright ban, Steemit could implement a "vote" cap - a single upvote only being worth a certain number of VESTS (or e.g. $10). Or a rule that prevents somebody that you've delegated to voting upon your content. Given the automation of upvoting services, this would have to be done at code or API level and I'm sure there are plenty more ideas but importantly (and the likely reason nothing's been implemented YET)...
if Steemit Inc. stops or bans UPVU, many investors will leave and take the price of Steem down with them.
I also believe that for a stop or ban to happen, it will require support from the community appointed witnesses which have some notable names that we know and love. We know that they have the best interests of the entire Steemit ecosystem at heart, WE voted for them.
Now welcome to the really scary bit...
it won't be long before we have ZERO input into who these witnesses are.
In UPVU's latest announcement, to further maximise investors ROI, you have to proxy your witness votes to them.
If you turn on the UPVU Boost function, a proxy that delegates the governance voting authority to upvu.proxy is automatically set.
When the UPVU Boost function is turned OFF, the existing STEEM reward is reduced by 50%.
As of today, that's 31,000,000 Steem Power potentially proxied to UPVU to choose Steemit's witnesses and therefore the sole decision maker on the future of this platform. No more xpilar, no more steemchiller, etc. - just UPVU.
So the window is closing. As UPVU Boost gains traction, Steemit will slowly lose its ability to stop it.
Have Your Say
I'm well aware of my bias and how I've positioned this article - as well as knowing that some of you reading this have delegated large sums to this service. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.