In this release we are pleased to announce many enhancements to the protocol. Witnesses can review the code and update to the latest master branch by June 30th at 15:00:00 GMT.  If the majority of the witnesses upgrade by that date the hard fork will go into effect. 

The code is available in github here:

https://github.com/steemit/steem/releases/tag/v0.8.0

## New Features 

We have added some new features to the protocol that are designed to give people greater control over their funds. 

## Vesting Withdraw Destinations

This is a new operation that gives users the ability to direct where the proceeds from the automatic vesting withdraws are deposited.  You can now specify another account to receive the payout. This new operation also gives you the option to automatically re-vest your funds in the new account.   With this feature enabled it is now trivial to automatically merge your accounts over time.

## Post / Comment Options 

There have been many cases where people would like the option of posting without receiving a payout. There is a new operation that allows you to configure the following aspects of a post:

the maximum payout
the percent of Steem Dollars to auto-convert to Steem Power
whether or not replies are allowed 
whether or not up votes are allowed  (down votes are always possible)
whether or not curation rewards are paid on a post

These options gives people to opt-out of the monetary aspects of Steem and focus on just pure content.  Changes to curation rewards and voting preferences are only possible prior to any votes being cast.  

All options are one-way. Once you specify it you cannot change it back. This gives everyone who chooses to engage with your post a heads-up as to the rules. 

Authors who decline to enable curation rewards on their post do not profit from that decision. The lack of curation rewards is likely to result is less total votes and being ignored by bots. 

## Vote Changes

We added some extra filtering to reject changes to your vote if the new vote is the same as the old vote. This helps protect people from inadvertently resetting their curation rewards.

We also allow people to change their vote in a way that would increase payout up to 60 seconds before payout. This gives police-bots time to down vote clear abusers, but otherwise gives people a more predictable experience.

## Rate Limit Changes

Rate limiting on posting posting comments and top-posts has been updated. Currently you are only able to submit a new post or comment once per minute.  Some users found they would hit this limit.  After the hard-fork there will be different limits for posts and comments.  Posts will be limited to one very 5 minutes (per account), and comments will be limited to one very 20 seconds. 

## Curation Reward Adjustments 

We have made a few small tweaks to the posting / curation rewards that will apply to all existing payouts. 

Voting Power regenerates at a fixed rate over 5 days. 
Posting Reward curve is now **R<sup>2</sup> + 2RS** rather than **R<sup>2</sup>** and a relatively small value of S was chosen.
Curation Rewards are not biased toward large account holders.

## Reverse Auction Curation Rewards 

Starting ***TODAY** all curation rewards earned by voting in the first 30 minutes after a post is made will be shared with the author. If you vote immediately after a post is made, then 99.94% of the curation reward will go to the author. If you vote after 15 minutes, then 50% will go to the author. Any votes made 30 minutes or later 100% will go to the curator. This only applies to the curation rewards. The author still gets at least 50% of the total rewards.

The reverse auction system creates a “price” for curators and makes bot development more complex and beneficial. Under the current system there is a race to be first which results in a random ordering of votes from bots on a post. The order dramatically impacts the profitability of the bot and reduces the ability of Steem to extract useful information from bots. Currently only 1 bit of information per vote.

Under the new system bots must balance speed vs payout without waiting too long. Which ever bot is willing to share the most with the author for the privilege of going first wins.  To maximize their reward bots want to wait the longest time possible without letting other bots go first.  

The goal isn’t to eliminate bots, that is impossible. The goal is to make sure that bots provide us as much useful information as possible and to encourage development of sophisticated voting strategies. Steem can now extract 10 times the information from the same bot vote.

If something is trivial to curate then votes pile in and early and the author benefits.  If it is difficult to curate then curators make the maximum reward due to the time it takes to identify and discover the content.

## Discussion Rewards

Starting July 4th, 25% of the total payouts allocated to a top-level post will be split among all comments proportional to the votes the comments receive.  All comments will be paid out at the same time as the parent post and all votes on replies count toward extending the parent posts’ payout time. 

This change is made to facilitate more efficient monitoring of payouts. Rather than reviewing payouts for random comments at random times, people see payouts grouped together under a single discussion.  

By rewarding discussion we are encourage reviews and critiques of high payout posts.

## Parent Post Rewards

Comments no longer share their payouts with the parent comment. We reversed the direction of flow, top level posts now share rewards with comments.

## Fix Divide by Zero Error

The existing code has a bug that will cause a divide by zero error on July 4th for anyone who does not upgrade to new code. This means that not upgrading by July 4th is not an option. 

## No Curation Rewards after First Payout

After the first payout on a post is made it is possible for additional payouts to be made if more votes come in later. These “late votes” will no longer qualify for curation rewards.