In about 6 weeks from now, there will be an expected hardfork of the Hive chain, meaning that witnesses will upgrade their nodes to a new set of rules that will be applied to all users of the blockchain. This is why "code is law" - but laws can change.
A couple of the changes will center around curation and voting activity and if you want a little background, here is a post on curation now and to come I wrote from a month or so ago, which could help you. The reason I am writing this one now is that a few people have asked me questions as to how I think it might play out.
While no one really knows precisely what will happen as it is driven by people's behavior, we are guided by incentive and on Hive, many people are understandably economically orientated in this respect. Many people automate votes to increase their chances of curation return, some do not vote on posts that already have votes on it for the same reason, even if they think the post is worth it. Moving to the new "three window" model with flat curation in each (first is 24 hours wide) and no penalty for voting anywhere between the boundaries, curation habits might change considerably.
I think that people will often vote later and even if a post has votes on it, people will feel more comfortable putting their vote on top, because they will not be penalized for it. Also, they won't be penalized for voting early, but there is no "stacking" multiplier to benefit them over those voting after in the same window. But, this does make a difference, because at the moment, when people vote early, a percentage of the curation is "lost" and returned to the pool, effectively filling up the pool a bit. On some posts, this early voting can send 15-20% back into the pool for distribution.
This has a couple of effects, as when it goes back to the pool, it gets redistributed out to the next set of posts, again having some percentage sent back to he pool again. This means that post rewards might go down slightly,* as curators will be earning more due to not having to pay the penalty.
But, there are a lot of benefits for curators in this move, as essentially, in each respective window, they can't be front run. Current curation benefits from a multiplier effect, which incentivizes voting early, with the game being trying to earn more from the multiplier than the loss from the penalty. If I vote a dollar, I "should" get 50% of the value back in Hive. If I vote at 2.5 minutes, I will lose 50% of the curation, so I will only get 15% - but, if a largish voter comes in after me, I will gain from their vote, draining some of their curation returns into my own and I may end up with significantly more than the 50% curation my own vote brings.
This will no longer be the case post-HF25 and most people will earn the 50% curation percentage if voting in the first 24 hour window, meaning that stake is more reliable in terms of curation return calculation. This means that the voting bots that have been "draining" the curation from later voters (often manual voters) will have no benefits, as the curation percentage is flat. This will see some people gain significantly in curation return (CR) and I suspect this might be between 15 and 25 percent, but won't know for sure until it actually happens.
For example, currently for 213,000 HP (my stake):
The max vote is 8 dollars (hard to get an accurate value on this) and HIVE feed (blockchain) price is 59 cents
This means that the vote value in a day is $80 and the curation on it is (80/2)/0.59 = ~67 HIVE CR a day.
That is at the "50%" mark, but many are getting far less than that. Taken from @abh12345's Engagement league:
Top 10 curators:
Curators 40-50:
As you can see, there is a massive difference in "HP per 1000" and this is also going to be affected by available voting stake. But as you can see, there almost a 100% difference per 1000 comparing 1st and 41st. Even looking at similar stakes of about 6000 HP, for example Anggreklestari (3.4/1000HP) and Galberto (2.0/1000HP), the first is earning 60% more in curation returns, with 21 and 12 HIVE POWER for the week respectively. The 100th in the list earns 1.7/1000HP - which is probably pretty average for a manual voter. These are spread out across the entire week, so they are pretty accurate.
If we look at my example above with 213,000 HP (which I chose because it is large enough to show difference), we can see what could happen. It was 67 HP a day, so that is 469 HP a week from curation or, 2.2/1000HP. I don't get anywhere near that and I think the last time I was on the list, I was sitting around 1.8/1000HP in a week.
As you can see, normal 50% voting is on par with about the midrange of the engagement league or there abouts, but, if you think about what happens when the voting bots no longer have an advantage, their multiplier gets spread across all voters instead. Plus, the voting bots are voting early, meaning they are not only taking the largest share of curation reward, they are also returning the most to the pool. This means that the returned to the pool amount is also evenly distributed across.
If 10% on average is being sent back to the pool from early voting and 10% is being driven to the earliest of voters, it could be that an extra 20% is being distributed across all voters equally (in the first window), which will benefit most current voters significantly. If I were to get the "50%" curation, it would be an extra 100 HP or so a week for me.
But, it isn't about this increase alone, it is also about simplifying various aspects of the blockchain and this will mean that people are able to vote more freely, without having to think about curation returns at all. Yes, the first window gets more than the second, but having a 24 hour window means that a person can drop in and vote daily, without worry of curation "loss". I hope what this will also mean is that people will vote on content that they think brings value, regardless of whether it is high or low, as not only will there be a flat curation, but the voting curve which makes calculations very difficult, will also be removed, so small votes on content that has no votes will have the same staked weighting as large votes on content.
This will mean there is also incentive to vote on comments again, as there will be no curation or value penalty to do so, as there is now. This will hopefully see a consolidation of some votes on great posts that push their value very high, as well as an increase in engagement as it once again becomes economically valuable to engage well. As said, most work on incentive and economic value is high up on the hierarchy of needs.
It is also going to get interesting with the curation accounts, as they are going to be incentivized to vote in the first 24 hours of a post going live, but will likely struggle to do so, meaning that there will still be a fair amount of game in finding great posts early, that will get found by curators later. I think that on the most part though, the decent curation initiatives do a decent job of increasing distribution, if they are manually searching, so this should be supported also.
As said, a lot of the complexity around voting is being removed, which takes out incentive for maximizing bots while still leaving room for automation and, brings additional value for the human eyes and commenters who make this platform pretty great at times. Simplification is necessary so that a person joining into the pool can just do what they enjoy without having to feel like they are missing out for doing so. This is going to potentially be one of the most disruptive hardforks to voting behavior since 2017 and I think that it will benefit the community a lot.
It is going to be interesting in the first few weeks to see how it plays out and watch as people adjust their behaviors according to the new incentives. Personally for me, curation is nice to receive, but it is a secondary thought as an earner, as I spend the vast majority of my Hive time on my content. However, I like the idea of being able to reward more on comments without being penalized as well as being able to spread smaller votes to lower value posts without missing out on curation. I don't have to change at all for this, as the few autos I set aren't maximized for curation and most of my voting is manual. What I might do however is add some larger votes on comments after the hardfork too, so the really great ones get pushed to the top and we are able to earn together. That actually might be the best thing for curation returns for me - the other half benefits someone else.
I don't know if this is helpful, so ask question and I will try to answer in the comment section if I can.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Warning: because of the curve, individual vote values are hard to calculate, so I kind of guessed a bit. Essentially, take some of my numbers with a grain of salt. @abh12345's Engagement League post is far more accurate as it is real earnings over a week and references all votes in a period to find the average.