Fantastic analysis! Good to see that the effect should be beneficial for smaller accounts overall.
From a behavioural perspective my guess is that after HF20 the rule of thumb most people will use is not to upvote in the first 15 minutes (in the same way that the old rule of thumb was to upvote at 30 minutes).
On this basis it is likely that accounts with small payouts will return relatively little to the reward pool, since there is no real reason to upvote prior to the 15 minute mark.
Accounts with larger payouts will probably still return some proportion to the reward pool due to curation-hunters early voting around the 12-14 minute mark. So even after HF20 this could continue to have an overall positive impact for smaller accounts.
As an aside, it would be good for platforms like @steempeak to implement a "delay my votes to the 15 minutes mark" option, allowing users to browse through and vote without worrying about the timing. I think this shouldn't be too difficult as they already have a buffer system to avoid the repeat posting / voting time restrictions.
An option to "delay all votes made through steempeak on this post to the 15 minute mark" would be potentially more controversial but also an interesting option. It would need wider adoption, ideally with steemit and busy also implementing, to be fully useful. One to debate!
Great comment! Yes I totally agree that in actual practice, for the largest accounts that always have a high expected payout on posting, we will definitely still see votes coming in before 15 minutes because of the curation hunters. Really it is similar to what we see now on auto-votes set up on large accounts - you don't see very many set to 30 minutes even though at first blush that might seem the optimal time - actual optimal time is going to be determined by behavior of other voters, and constrained by the diminishing returns the earlier you vote - for haejin/ranchorelaxos of the world I expect we will see incoming votes even earlier than the 12 minute vote.
I think your last suggestion is great, and on a related note I have actually been planning on commenting on the GITHUB proposal that an adjustment will need to be made to the automatic self-vote that an author can enable by clicking the box when posting - if that stays at 0 minutes it is obviously to the detriment of the author. Possibly that should be a slider (self vote at 0-15 minutes) with a note explaining possible diminishing returns on vote closer to 0.
That's a good point on the automatic self-vote. A default of 15 minutes would probably be sensible for new users but the opportunity to change with a slider to earlier (or even later than 15 minutes) would be useful additional functionality.
Hey @miniature-tiger
Here's a tip for your valuable feedback! @Utopian-io loves and incentivises informative comments.
Contributing on Utopian
Learn how to contribute on our website.
Want to chat? Join us on Discord https://discord.gg/h52nFrV.
Vote for Utopian Witness!