NOTICE:

Due to an bug in witness scheduling algorithm all miners / full nodes will have to upgrade to the latest master by block 864,000  (about 22 hours from now).

This is the same block that switches from 100% computational POW to 5% computational POW and 95% DPOS-style voting of VESTING stakeholders.

Please join the steem.slack.com #witnesses channel to get the latest updates and support for this and future hard forks.

Changes to the protocol include:

1. adjusting log-term inflation rate calculations to compensate for compounding effects. The STEEM supply will now double every year (almost exactly) ignoring impact of unpredictable Steem Dollar conversion timings. These rates only change things 1 year+ from launch.

2. lowering the min account creation fee that is configurable by witnesses

3. removing witness creation fee (only one per account)

4. fix some issues regarding the 'temp' account

5. enforce maximum url length to 2048

6. fix some bugs in how reward payouts were calculated, these changes only impact things that happen after July 4th.

7. 1 million to 1 stock split on VESTS.  If you had 1 VEST you now have 1M VESTS.  This is done to improve precision in VESTS / STEEM calculations before it becomes a problem. This is purely an accounting change and has no impact on ownership.