The upcoming Hardfork 25 will change the curation scale to a far simpler model than it was, which is summed up in @blocktrades' recent update post regarding development work.
The new curation reward algorithm works as follows:
- first day (24 hours) linear rewards (equal weight to all voters in that window)
- second window (24 hours to 72 hours/3 days) with reward weight/2
- remaining votes in 3rd window with reward weight/8
Under the new algorithm, anyone voting with the first 24 hours of the post receives the same proportional rewards. In other words, for any given voting strength, the voter will get the same percentage return-on-investment as any other voter during that period.
Voters voting during the second and third window receive a smaller proportional curation reward (and voters who voted during the first 24 hour period receive a little more reward when voters vote during the 2nd or 3rd window). Note that if no one votes during the first window, then 2nd window voters will receive the same amount of curation as if they had voted during the first window.
This creates a far greater parity in opportunity between manual curators and automated curation, as "frontrunning" is far less likely. This change might not seem like it will do a lot, but I think there is going to be quite a difference in how it plays out, as there are a couple of factors that will heavily increase the value of curation for manual curators.
From the current curation model, there are two factors that will change heavily - firstly is the most obvious to have an effect, which is the removal of the curved stacking of votes to enhance curation return into the three time buckets. This means that all of those early bot voters that don't read a post, will have no curation advantage over those who come in within the first 24 hours, and those in the next two days will have no advantage over anyone else in the same bucket etc.
The second reason is harder to evaluate.
Currently, there is a "cost" to voting early, which will be removed in the upcoming hardfork. This is a straight line system that returns value to the pool when voting earlier than the 5 minute period. It looks like this.
If voting at:
@ First second - 100% curation returned to pool
@ 1 minute - 80%
@ 2 minutes - 60%
@ 3 minutes - 40%
@ 4 minutes - 20%
@ 5 minutes and after - 0%
While the author will get 50% always What this means for the curator is, if they were to vote at 2.5 minutes and would have got a 10 HIVE curation return, they would instead get a 5 HIVE curation return and the other 5 HIVE will return into the rewards pool for distribution. This might not sound like a lot, but it can add up fast and can actually be around 20% of the total value of the curation portion of the post.
So in a hypothetical post with a 20% curation return (10% of total post value) that was paying out 100 HIVE in total, The author will get 50 HIVE and the curators will have 50 HIVE distributed among them, minus the effects of the lost HIVE - meaning that 10 HIVE would return to the rewards pool for redistribution.
If you then imagine that 10 HIVE will get redistributed to one more post under the same conditions, the next author would get 5 HIVE, the curators 4 and 1 HIVE would go back into the pool again. This I think means that authors will actually get 55% of the rewards, while curators 45% - all things remaining equal for the scenario across these two posts, which they generally aren't.
We can see this illustrated here on a post of mine from a few days ago:
Author payout is in blue - 50%
Curator payout in green - 32.13%
Total payout returned to pool - 17.87% (that is 35% of the curation total)
However, because of the current stacking mechanism where those who vote early benefit from those who vote late, it is possible to make up for the loss of the "curation return to the pool" function by frontrunning other voters, especially on posts that are expected to get voted highly late. This means that autovoters are able to position their vote in an optimal point to benefit from those voting after and undercutting them to reduce other voter curation rewards, but get a multiplier that makes up for the loss of the return to pool costs.
While there is game in this, it heavily favors the people who are autovoting early and those who are able to evaluate conditions and place votes with precision - which isn't the average person by far. The new curation mechanism should affect this problem by firstly taking a lot of the game out of the curation in stacking and then not returning curation HIVE back into the pool. What this does is gives the curators the full 50% of the curation return, only affected by which time bucket they voted in and overall - this will be far better for curators as their full vote will have an effect where they want to curate, rather than putting it back into the pool for redistribution.
This means that no matter the size of the account voting, curation will be more valuable all round, because no one will be undercut from maximizing frontrunners and the entire curation amount will be paid out. The difference in these two factors might be far more significant than first thought and should also give a level playing field, meaning that while the autovoting frontrunner maximizers will see a decrease in their curation returns, the manual voters here daily will see an increase in theirs.
I think this will also have an effect on what kinds of posts get highly voted, since there are one or two very large voter groups who only vote on posts (often low quality) with no votes on them to maximize their curation return, since they do not have to worry about the HIVE convergent curve costs. This means that quality posts might end up attracting more value overall, since there is no reason not to vote on them, even if they have already attracted voters.
And then, the convergent curve removal in the next hardfork comes into curation play in this also, as there will be equal incentive to vote on comments, as the vote value will be the same regardless of how much HIVE is going to be paid out, meaning that there will be equal curation and equal author rewards as voting on a post that has already been curated or, hasn't been discovered yet.
For someone like me who has always voted comments, this works out as a significant difference, since about 20-40% of my vote values go out to comments, which means I have been "losing" curation since they do not pass the convergent curve. However, it isn't only that - because they don't pass the curve, the comment authors are also not getting the full weighting of my vote.
After Hardfork 25, I suspect that comments I vote on will receive more value than today, plus I will also earn more curation from them. This is good for everyone who is active commenting and voting manually and could mean for many people around a 20% increase in the value of their interactions, while a clear drop off on autovoting maximization return will happen, with the difference plus the return to pool going directly into the wallets of curators.
While I completely understand why these mechanisms were originally introduced in the EIP, I think that this simplification will bring with it a lot more incentive to stake HIVE also, as the curation return becomes far more predictable, without having to think much about when or what to vote. Instead, people can just vote on what they enjoy and still get the benefits of the curation without having to miss out. There will be a few people out there who are maximizing their curation that will get a reduction, but all in all, most of the truly active stake on the platform will get a better result overall, as they will no longer have to compete with the maximizers with bots that they are very unlikely to beat, let alone beat consistently.
However, there will also be more incentive for abuse, so I think that people will have to also come to terms with understanding that as owners of the network it is our responsibility to keep our streets as clean as we can too. Every change has pros and cons, though many people want the upside without ever having to personally deal with the down.
Anyway, perhaps this is useful for people who might not understand curation to get a basis of where we are now and what is to come - but I think that in general, there is going to be a lot of benefit in HF25 for the platform of active users and hopefully, we will be better incentivizing the curation of good posts and encouraging far more interaction than we have seen over the last few years.
We will know how it plays out in the weeks after HF25, which is a couple months away. Should be interesting to see how disruptive it is and, how good it is for those who are manually active on Hive :)
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
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I think that sounds good? I've had one of those days so I'm feeling a bit dumber than usual xD I'll probably notice when I keep merrily doing what I do and some numbers are different enough to warrant attention.
A change like this was long overdue IMHO. Some of us may have benefited a lot from being recipients of autovoting. But making autovoting the best course of action or ROI was a bad move, especially when it comes to attracting newcomers.
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We shall see how many people will change their behavior again after the HF. After the one that brough in the EIP, it was possible to get rid of bidbots - let's hope that they don't return.
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I doubt bidbots will come again. Personally I won't be changing any of my habits because ROI was never the reason I did curation.I have m other investments for that. I curate for persona enjoyment. The new system will be more beneficial to people like me who were not optimizing for curation.
Luckily, downvotes still exist :)
It should be. I have been talking to a few of my friends here about it and how it will be interesting to see how much it will affect. I reckon for some people, they will be getting 30% or more improvement.
I think coordinated downvotes should stop that but time will tell.
It is whether people apply them. A lot fear retaliation.
Yes they need a way of anonymizing them. If you could delegate your upvotes and downvotes out separately. Then you could delegate to a downvote bot.
A very good idea.
It has amazed me for some time as to how many use auto-vote, something I switched off when moving to Hive, preference being to in person touch rather than gaming the system.
Each to their own, I do not begrudge those who game earnings it is understandable, let us hope this brings more people to life giving honest comments and commitment to growing not only curation, but being authentic.
@tipu curate
Some people pretty much only autovote - but it isn't the autos that are the problem per se. For example, my babytarazkp account which has all of my tribe tokens on them votes through trailing me and several other accounts. There is no way I can get it to vote 700+ times a week on all kinds of different content to distribute the tokens to where they are needed myself - it has to be automated. Also, I use it for a couple of people who I read anyway, so I may aswell get some benefits. I can effectively leave those autos on after the HF and still benefit though.
It is just that there are some people and groups who use autos and their voting practices to maximize returns regardless of content - this should help with that a bit as well as bring more value to the manual curators. I suspect the average curator to increase their curation return by 10-20% after the Hardfork.
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Auto is not a problem once you selectively vote, earlier period on old system it was almost the 'done' thing, many using to bounce within certain communities only, raising their stakes.
Getting to everyone manually is a problem, I do enjoy making contact and commenting by listing the many I visit.
This is good for everyone, sure to help new arrivals as well.
I have the same problem with @combination as it is not an active engager, but a numbers draw. So it has to be on trail voting.
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 24/48) Liquid rewards.
It sounds like it's going to be good for me then since I manually curate and often on comments.
I had no idea that there was a "disadvantage" to voting on comments as opposed to posts although I knew about the timing thing.
I doubt the changes will change my behaviour much except to maybe check if I'm still autovoting on anything. I think the tool to do that changed when we moved to Hive and I'm not sure if I had autovotes on it or not.
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There is a curve (similar to the 5 minute curation one in some respects) where there is a loss of vote power up until ~16 HIVE payout. I suspect for me, it has likely accumulated to about 50-80 HIVE a week in value lost.
Depends on which you use, but by now you should probably have checked. Autovoting itself isn't the issue in this case and I will continue to vote on authors I like this way - it is the blind autovoting that is the issue, the kind that doesn't care who or what it votes on, as long as it maximizes return.
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I hope that it is not to disruptive. I am glad that I have been keeping track of my curation earnings as it will allow me to see how it effects my duration earnings pretty easily. I expect it will go up.
I do vote post that are older than three days, not on a super regular basis, but often enough, generally from a followers re-blog. I am liking the fact of no loss on comment votes so when my slider says 0.025 I may not have to worry so much about topping up dustsweeper as frequently as I do.
I have finally gotten to the point I can actually vote on a few comments, and still be able to give out my normal votes. I may have to lower the percentage on my normal votes, but as my holding increase i would have been doing that any ways.
So I am looking forward to the Summer of Hive after the HF.
I was almost going to tag you directly into the post because of the records you keep. It will be interesting to see what comes of it.
I think if price increases just a little bit more, there will be a lot of people with the capabilities to adequately reward both posts and comments. I know for me, I am likely to push more toward some comment votes in the future as I did before - where 50% of my voting went to engagement.
I like that I am getting to where I can vote comments, it is going to take me a little practice leading up to HF 25, and I hope after HF 25 I can really test the comment vote waters. For the first 90 days of this year my curation rate was 2.22 a day. A nice increase over the first full year rate. April 1st, 2020 to April 1st, 2021 the average was 1.77 for the first year year on Hive. HP growth has helped the average increase over time.
This is a great informative write @tarazkp , i was not aware of many of the things spoken about here but it has become a lot clearer in most points. I do think HF25 should or will bring more interaction hopefully it is certainly lacking that at the moment.
Would be a great thing for new accounts to come on, comment and immediately start seeing some financial potential of Hive. It doesn't have to be much, but it can make a huge difference.
Sure it would give them more incentive 👍
Sure it would give them more incentive 👍
Thank you for that very informative post. I now understand how curation % works. We will see what happens after the HF25. I like that the time frame for curation rewards will be extended, giving manual curators time to actually read the post and comment, The interaction, comments and replies will become more valuable to users, hence building close knit communities.
Have a great day.
It should be a great change for the average Hive user and I hope that people will still make sure to keep an eye on abuse. Vote good comments rather than spam - downvote unnecessary selfvotes on comments.
Got it, I am learning. Thanks. But I don't think I can downvote anyone. Too sensitive for that. I just want to wish everyone well. I know we are all going to be fine.
My downvote mana has never been touched in almost 4 years now.
I have never downvoted either. It would just make me feel bad. I really never understood why it was there, but I guess it helps keep the riff raff down.
It has amazed me for some time as to how many use auto-vote, something I switched off when moving to Hive, preference being to in person touch rather than gaming the system.
Each to their own, I do not begrudge those who game earnings it is understandable, let us hope this brings more people to life giving honest comments and commitment to growing not only curation, but being authentic.
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Autovoting isn't gaming the system, unless it is to maximize. There are plenty of reasons to use autovoters outside of maximizing ROI.
I did not realize the incredible depth that curation has. Math has never been my strong suit, but it seems as if this new update will be beneficial in establishing quality engagement and curation. Really interesting stuff
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This is just the tip of it. The algorithms that calculate it all are pretty complex - so I hear - since I am crap at math :)
Math is overrated anyways
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Very interesting curating system. I thinks it will be a more fair system. Thanks for sharing! Greetings!
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It should improve some things - create a few more problems too :)
Simplicity is attractive. A lot of people were turned off over the years when they arrived, and were 'helpfully' instructed by strangers, on the minutiae of finding the best upvote bot to re-invest their earnings through.
Anyone who wanted to just come and post and hope for a decent payout, were instead completely overwhelmed by the complexity of it all and just left. (I know, because many of them were friends of mine.)
Come, post, have fun, read, upvote, make friends, maybe make some money.
That's all this should be.
Yeah I agree. I have written enough posts to understand the complexity of it - and I don't even go that deep. It should be simpler.
I just wanted to get in on this comment train.
I feel better now
I should probably say something as well, just in case.
I usually upvote all posts within 24 hours anywhere since I come here many times a day everyday :)
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Lol yeah -I don't know anyone who isn't :)
Overall the changes are a clear improvement in my view.
However I would prefer to see that first window increased - perhaps 3 days, 3 days, 1 day instead of 1 day, 2 days, 4 days.
The vast majority of votes are going to be made in that first voting window. For most (i.e. non-whale) voters the drop in curation rewards in the second window will be significant and the third very significant.
Which means a post's rewarding will largely be over after one day (aside from potentially a thin chance of a whale vote).
I think a long first window will increase the likelihood of manual curation. Because there's more time to do it.
But also it will increase the chances of posts going viral. A post can get an initial surge on the first day, reach trending, and then gather more momentum in the following days. Without a cost to the curators and with less reliance on whales.
Aside from that I think that automated voting will continue. People will have a set of quality authors that they want to support and will most likely continue to do so in an automated fashion.
However the timing is likely to change. The automated voting could be set towards the middle or end of the first window. This would allow the curator to read the post and manually vote at a different percentage based on quality, or not at all, if they have time. If they don't have time then the automated vote would kick in. This is all an improvement in my view.
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At first glance, as you say, it seems like a positive change, although not too big. Fighting bad practices is difficult because there will always be someone who wants to take advantage of the situation. As far as I disagree is the quality of the articles that is very relative, the world is full of great songs but then Macarena goes and triumphs.
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This is absolutely fantastic news and I can not wait. I manually curate noting I am in block trades curation trail but rarely have enough HP to vote on it.
As a manual curator I have no idea how it works I tend to vote posts whenever and find myself getting 0 or 0.02 returns lol
Good to know I'll be able to earn by engaging and upvoting whenever in the first 24hrs.
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You should get a decent bump in returns in curation post-HF25 - without having to change anything at all.
hire street cleaners, garbo's, police etc :).
looking forward to the changes
People still complain.
Yeah, it should be a decent change in the dynamics =)
Thank you for that very informative post. I now understand how curation % works. We will see what happens after the HF25. I like that the time frame for curation rewards will be extended, giving manual curators time to actually read the post and comment, The interaction, comments and replies will become more valuable to users, hence building close knit communities.
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I really like the sound of this, especially the first phase meaning the first 24-hour window, which means that auto upvoting doesn't become so important, but instead, it is easier for people to actually vote for good content instead of just auto-voting after 3-5 minutes! This actually made me really happy. Thanks for sharing!
75/25 rewards should come back. Why does someone who powers up their stake and upvote someone get the same amount of reward as someone who writes the post they upvote? Misaligned incentives.
50/50 encourages people to buy stake, never post or comment, join any curation trail, sit back and relax while your account uses a bot to upvote things and you make money from doing nothing.
50/50 is not an incentive for Proof Of Brain.
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Because there is a very direct cost to buying stake and powering up, as well as risks and the responsibilities of the chain.
Depends what you consider proof of brain.
To me, PoB would be people that are not bots who are posting/commenting legitimately(not spamming/not begging for upvotes/not stealing content/etc).
50/50 has longterm problems with whales not distributing their power overtime and instead keeping themselves whales.
75/25
A whale with 1 million HP, lets say his weekly outgoing upvotes add up to 2,000 USD total, 1,500 for who he upvotes and 500 for himself.
50/50
Same sitiuation, but now he gets 1,000 USD a week to himself and 1,000 to authors.
Under 50/50 his whale position remains relatively static in terms of his overall ownership of the % of HP on the network in total. Under 75/25 everyday that whale loses his % of total HP owned.
I see that as a big issue, entrenched stakeholders who stay that way. Power corrupts absolutely, I believe I heard that somewhere ;)
This is so good, incentivizing rapid voting was always a big problem as far back as the early Steem days. I am a huge fan of this change. Anybody who is engaging with the post in the first 24h can be considered early.
The new model will foster engagement which is the most important variable here
I really hope so. Would love to see many more times the comments we are currently getting.
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Great explanation of what things are like now and how they are to be soon.
This is what I think will make the new change a successful decision.
Yep. A lot of people try to play the game, but don't actually understand how it works in the first place - better to take some of the game out that can be automated and let manuals an even chance.
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I'm in favor of the new changes. I have never tried to "game the system" to make the rules work for me and have never really changed my voting behavior in the past (except for voting after the 15min
then 5min mark) and won't change going forward, but its nice to learn that I will likely benefit a little more in the future from doing what I always do.
I think you will see a decent change in the outcomes, which would be great to see.
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I'm hoping so. That would be nice
This sounds good actually. A vote one the first day is workable for people who just read at the end of the working day versus the so-and-so minute window.
And also better return on the comments? Also even better. More reason for interaction but as you mention.we gotta keep it straight for the abuse situation
Yep - originally I heard it was going to be 2 hours only, but one day is far better - people need to sleep occasionally ;)
ep - there will be no curve on voting at all, so it will mean that comments are rewarded, even at the small amounts.
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As a user I would say I am happy with these measures..
The abuse part aside, that is for the smart people how to deal with that :D
great post! I am really looking forward to these changes as well
Nice change in my opinion, but I'd like to ask. If a whale gives an Upvote on the 3rd day, the curation he receives is for example 40% and for the post owner, will they receive 60% of the Rewards?
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I've tried to always manually curate because I lose interest when automatically voting. On my posts, I give 100% to those who take the time to comment. Thank you for all your hard work. The bots took out all the fun for me, and I left. I am not into making big money. I am here because I don't want FB or any other social media sites making profits on my personal data. Here on Hive and other crypto social media sites, at least I can make a few dollars while enjoying creating and socializing.
You have summed up really well and I really liked the idea of having multiple window. Auto Voting I guess is going to stay for longer not because some one wants to earn more through curation but there are times where your voting percentage sits on 100% na dulu cannot vote manually. In that scenario auto vote can come handy
I am sure it will change some habits and hopefully will remove votes from posts that are there only for gaming the system. Would be good to see this create a more even spread with some users benefitting more than they are currently. Hoping comments benefit from this change.
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I think they nailed the time frames on this one. I heard talks of 3 hours and didn't like it 12 hours was ok but 24 hours feels like fair play for everyone. It gives everyone no matter where you live enough time to read, comment, curate the post instead of being in some mad rush so you don't miss out on rewards. It also provides value in rewarding those more who continue to use the platform every day and curate.
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Only the convergent curve was introduced in EIP. The curation bonus for earlier votes was there from the very beginning of Steem and the early vote penalty was added shortly thereafter (some time in 2016).
I was talking about the free DVs and the reward split that came with it too - the stacking was of course there for a long time, but has also changed form a few times over the years as well.
I expect (guess) that there might be about a 20% increase in curation for manual curators from this - does that sound about right?
I have no idea, have not looked at the numbers.
That is a great improvement. The application of rewards schemes is expected to encourage authors to post original and valuable contents and I like the scheme to give more reward to comments.
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I never knew there was an advantage/disadvantage in voting on comments. I frequently vote comments and didn't think further than the vote itself.
As far as the votes go after HF - on one hand, there are a couple auto votes for different reasons, mostly they are long reads and I get to them at the end of my day. I mostly curate manually, if possible, I would like to keep it that way. It gets me out there reading and seeing what people are writing.
And a lot of it is interesting. Thanks for the clarification.
@leprechaun and @uwelang, here is the article I told you about! Read it, and the comments so that you can make a wide idea of everything.
Thanks to @tarazkp, we have this insight now!
Until then we should up-vote content before we read it. After reading the first couple of paragraphs I decided I'd better up-vote this one. Maybe up-vote all the ones we are going to read and then later after reading them remove or adjust the vote.
if that works for you. I am not sure it is the best way to go though.
I concur with what you just said. I can't wait for HF25. No more vote front-running, and a mechanism to bring HBD into place. I hope the wallet apps will allow people to dollar-cycle the Hive dollars in an easy to use interface. I have written one right now. I have a feeling only people running hived will be able do this.
I am looking forward to it. Esp the incentive for good comment upvoting also to help drive engagement.
This is why I read your posts... Even when it hurts my brain. LoL
Great info here in a way that makes it easier to comprehend.
Well, I also stop by cuz I like old house remodeling. So that is a bonus. :-p
Anyway, perhaps this is useful for people who might not understand curation to get a basis of where we are now and what is to come - but I think that in general, there is going to be a lot of benefit in HF25 for the platform of active users and hopefully, we will be better incentivizing the curation of good posts and encouraging far more interaction than we have seen over the last few years.
So at last hard work will start to count and this is the best news of the day.
Reblogged so that I can read it again, as me and a few friends were discussing this.
Thanks!
Dear @tarazkp
Let me quote one comment I've read yesterday:
Those are valid concerns. Based on what you wrote above: who would decide to vote on posts older than 24hours?
The way I see it is that hardly anyone would place an upvote on post which is older than that. And we usually only read posts which we're planning to upvote. And if we do not read a post - then we do not comment.
So at the end of the day: window to visit, comment and upvote posts would be shortened from 7 days to 1 day only. And it surely isn't good for PH. Because it would also mean, that if I won't manage to support your content within those 24hours - then I won't be able to do it at all (in that case many of our posts would end up having close to no rewards).
I really hope to be wrong. Perhaps I understand that 24h window wrongly....
Yours, Piotr
The same people who are voting now on posts?
If you are curation activities for your "initiative" are done to maximize your curation returns, it probably isn't going to be good for you. If it is to reward valuable content, it likely is going to be good for you.
Thank you for your prompt reply @tarazkp
I still wonder how many curators would actually upvote content after that 24h window, knowing that their curation rewards would be simply higher if they focus on posts published within that window.
Assumption that people will be upvoting posts older than that because they want to reward valuable content may be not valid in my opinion.
Time will show. I still hope I'm wrong and Im curious to see how will it all play out.
Cheers, Piotr
Not many upvote after 24h now.
The rewards in eachtime bucket will likely be better than most people are getting now after 5 minutes on anything that has already had even a small amount of voting on it. But, since you are looking to maximize, I am guess you are maximizing already, so it might hurt you. However, if no one has voted on the content in the first 24 hours, the second period becomes the first. So, I am guessing you will still be able to have content that is not voted and increase your curation after the first 24h.
I think however that you are focusing on the wrong part of it - but I suspect that the most important thing for you at this time is curation ROI.
It depends if the content got votes within 24 hours. If it didn't get any (or many), then voting in the second window is essentially the same as voting in the first. So there is no loss of incentive to curate content that got missed in the first 24 hours.
The incentive does drop to pile on more votes on something already heavily voted in 24 hours. That may be good or bad, people probably have different views on this.