Do you blow your load in 1 minute?

So the vote auction time is going to move from 15 minutes to 1 minute with HF21 and I wonder if it is going to be much better for authors - it is likely better for the bots of course.

After HF20, it moved from 30 minutes to 15 minutes and people have continually been adjusting their vote times to maximize their curation, downward. Some people don't seem to know what the auction is but essentially (at current times):

if voting at 0 seconds, 100% curation return goes back into the pool
if voting at at 5 minutes, 66% curation return goes back into the pool
if voting at at 10 minutes, 33% curation return goes back into the pool
if voting at at 15 minutes, 0% curation return goes back into the pool

So why not vote at 15 minutes? because of course the early voters get additional benefits when votes stack on top of their. I have seen front running large votes getting a 400% curation return, but this is only on small vote values. There are plenty of posts about this if you want more technical details.

What is important to remember is this bit though...

goes back into the pool

 
What does this mean? Well, if for example there was a vote of 10 dollars and was the only voter, under 50/50 the author would get 5, the curator 5 worth. But if the curator voted at 0 seconds they would get 0 curation and the 5 that they would have got goes back into the pool. That 5 then gets distributed on other votes instead. This means that other vote values are increased based on what is in the pool.

When people are trying to maximize their curation, they are actually going to have to give up curation returns in many circumstances while the author is always guaranteed the 50%. Most large curators on this platform get currently between 15-20% curation as generally they vote later and, there are no votes that can stack on theirs but small voters can quite easily get 40%+.

When it goes to 1 minute auction time, it means that pretty much all the bot votes will come in within the first minute and many at 10 seconds, 30 seconds, etc losing some curation that goes into the pool. However, unless they don't care about curation and just want to give the author 50% they are trying to frontrun larger voters to come. The curators to come can however better see whether they still want to vote on that post at all and, some will instead move their votes on to other posts, they will look wider.

On top of this, the curation maximizers will continually drop their curation time to frontrun those who are trying to frontrun them. A race to zero to to speak. This will continually put more into the pool for distribution on other votes. Then comes the downvotes that are also going to land on bidbot users who abuse them. This puts more into the pool again.

While I don't know what will actually happen, the more that goes back in the pool, the more authors will get an as it shifts from 25/75 to 50/50 curation return and there is likely to be much more risk in purchasing votes meanings, disruption to demand and supply might be affected as more people pull their delegation and play the voting on content game again. While it is hard to predict just what will happen in general, moving the curation to 1 minute brings in a few more variables that make that prediction harder again.

Bots are of course written according to prediction of what will happen and they will act accordingly. The bots on Steem aren't overly sophisticated so they aren't going to factor in all aspects, making them more human-ish. This might mean more returns to the pool and that means that it will go into distribution again on all the other votes. That means that with the authors guaranteed their 50%, it is always 50% of more than before the return to the pool. Authors that care about earning should also encourage downvoting of whatever a person considers unworthy of the reward. A blurry photo with a 300 SBD payout perhaps?

With one minute reverse auction rounds,

if voting at 0 seconds, 100% curation return goes back into the pool
if voting at at 20 seconds, 66% curation return goes back into the pool
if voting at at 40 seconds, 33% curation return goes back into the pool
if voting at at 1 minute, 0% curation return goes back into the pool

Where are you going to set your bot, which bot do you use and how accurate are the voting times, and how many votes are going to packed onto those 20 blocks?

I do not think this curation change does that much all up but it does bring in new games that some people enjoy playing by frontrunning large votes from bidbots, and then there is the downvoting aspect that is going to potentially affect their curation return anyway. It brings in more complexity to the point that no one is going to likely be able to maximize efficiently, there are always going to be losses and, that means more randomization of outcome as everyone takes slightly different paths in an attempt to satisfy their wants.

Randomization drives evolution, inefficiency is opportunity.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]

For me? I am just going to vote when I vote - same as now.