12 out of 70 active witnesses are now running Steemd version 0.19.0 (which is the release candidate for Hardfork 19). 2 of them are in the top 19 witnesses, 6 of them in the top 50 witnesses (also known as runner-up witnesses) and 2 of them in the back-up witnesses platoon.
That means the adoption of hardfork 19 is very close. Based on my past (and present) experience as a witness and taking into account the recent developments I expect it to happen in 2 weeks, maximum. It may happen even faster than that.
Why is that important?
3 things.
1. The Reward Algorithm Is Going To Be Linear
Each vote will draw from the reward pool exactly what it represents, in terms of Steem Power. As of now, the reward algorithm is squared (n^2) which means the reward drawn from the reward pool grows exponentially with the amount of Steem Power of the voter, making whales extremely influential.
2. Voting Power Will Be "Depleted" After 10 Full Power Votes
As of now, if you vote with "full power", your voting stamina will deplete after around 40 votes. Starting hardfork 19, it will take only 10 votes to reach that level. Of course, you can vote with less power, and that will conserve your reserve for longer.
3. Whales Will Start Voting Again
As some of you (still) remember, there is an experiment in which whales are not voting. Or, if they are voting, they're being countervoted with equal power by other whales, by a process known as flagging. That experiment had very mixed result in the community (among those results, it ended up with one and a half month of Steemit hiatus for me) and I'm happy it will end.
What To Expect?
More revenue for good content creators, (probably) better content on the trending page and (wishfully) less drama.
As I already said, I expect that these moves will also create a stronger "middle class" in the Steemit ecosystem, a more powerful cohort of dolphins.
For the Steemit ecosystem I created a free tool for checking your potential rewards at steem.supply.
https://steemit.com/~witnesses