It would be cool if the Steem/SBD from an upvote were deposited instantly into the authors account when one received an upvote; the upvoting period still lasting seven days.

This would destroy the 'proof of brain' concept where any upvote can be 'negotiated' by the community (added to via more upvotes, flagged/downvoted if upvote is considered too high). The upvotes was designed this way on purpose and I've seen that although it's not perfect it's a much needed mechanism.

If we want to delegate to a project for one year in return for tokens/fiat, we need a way that no one can break that year contract; this will make delegations much more attractive to both parties involved. Why? Because dApps will be willing to pay more knowing that a delegation can't be pulled if a mutual lockup period is assigned. The investor is happy because they get more money for their delegations and thus have more leverage/negation power when working a deal.

There's a lot of beauty in delegations that can be taken away from a project at any time, because it puts the pressure on the one who promised a product (if they don't deliver, the delegations disappear, meanwhile the investor taking the risk of investing didn't loose a cent), whereas in ICO's the pressure is at the investor who has no way of knowing if he/she will ever gets what they were promised. But the other side of the coin is indeed it can be scary for investors as well to not know how long a delegation will last, and I've seen the downside of this already a few times on the Steem blockchain in different projects. It would be a shame if that same mechanism that's so distinctive from all other blockchains would keep investors from coming on here. A lock-up period would still mean any project on the Steem blockchain does not need to do an ICO but still has something 'stable' in hands. I can't see the downside of that, would be a great salespitch for investors and there could be different tiers of incentives for 'normal' delegators and 'long-term'/fixed delegators.