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Hey! I haven't come to any conclusions yet. I've one or maybe two more analyses to draw up looking at this area before I decide what I'll recommend. Hopefully the data will help other people to draw conclusions as well, or at least to support (or not) the arguments being made.

I would say from this analysis that it's clear 25% isn't being achieved. If that's the desired level then I think that passing curation rewards to the author in the first 30 minutes is something that shouldn't happen.

One solution is that those early curation rewards go back into the overall curation pot for other curators. This would ensure 25% is always the overall curation level.

This would also disincentivise early self-voting (I think).

That window keeps the bots in line.
If you want to disincentivize self voting, go back to the n2 and downvote abusers.

Things are this way because this benefits the rich the most, otherwise they would have listened when we objected before the hard forks were forced onto us, and they wouldnt have pounced on the reward pool like sharks.