The Problem Before 1UP
The Steem blockchain has two big problems: The distribution of good content and the consequential low payout for these posts due to lower exposure. To get to the Hot or Trending page is often the only way to find more followers and upvotes. And that is in times of upvote bots and autovotes difficult to achieve without paying for it. It requires just one upvote from big Steem Power holders to make posts visible due to the Proof of Stake system - while the Proof of Brain of the majority of the readers does little to spread the post and find the deserved audience.
Specifically on Utopian.io - the huge Steem-based platform for Open Source rewards - there are so many great development posts and other contributions that are getting the great Utopian upvote but not the deserved attention and exposure. Additionally there are curation reward hunters who upvote nearly everything that will be a profitable upvote in combination with the following Utopian bot. That does not invite more quality to the platform.
The Solution That 1UP offers
With 1UP all Steemians with a reputation of 45 or higher will get a brand new upvote button to give daily up to ten 1UP's to the best posts they find. These 1UP's are free and avoid the usual Proof of Stake system because no matter whether a whale or a minnow gives the 1UP - it always counts the same! The posts land on the special 1UP Ranking Page where ten times a day the post with the most 1UP's will be upvoted by the 1UP trail account and trigger all the 1UP trailers to also upvote the post. The trailers are additionally incentivized to participate through a following whale upvote which increases the expected curation rewards drastically.
The pilot project for 1UP was Utopian.io. Here we have a guaranteed whale upvote after a moderator accepts a post. This is the moment when the 1UP button is being activated and it stays active until the post is being upvoted from the @utopian-io whale account. The 1UP Ranking Page also list the previous winner to allow even more exposure to them. The integration of the 1UP button takes currently place with the free browser extension @steem-plus.
1UP is the first system that allows for decentralized voting system for posts on the Steem blockchain and allows higher exposure and payouts for quality content. It also automates the voting power on any platform using 1UP to efficiantly delegate upvotes to the posts with the highest hivemind consensus without ever going idle at 100% voting power again. This allows to maximize the usually delegated Steem Power for big platforms like DTube, DSound, DLive, dMania who are all still manually upvoting and often have long idle times creating great opportunity costs.