The Timing of Curation

Without curation (voting on content) there are no payouts (income) on Blurt. This essential part of the blockchain is both an art and a science. In this post, I want to focus on the science of curation. Not so much the who, where, and what to vote on... but the why, and the when. Welcome to the timing of curation.

Why to curate

There is a "reward pool" of BLURT tokens, which is constantly refilled based on the total investment in the Blurt blockchain. The more powered up BLURT (BP), the more rewards there are in the pool. When someone buys or earns some BLURT and powers it up, our reward pool gets bigger, and so do all the rewards. When someone powers down their BP, our reward pool and rewards get smaller. If everyone powered down their BP at the same time, the reward pool would be empty, and nobody would be paid for their participation in the blockchain.

All rewards (for creation and for curation) come from the reward pool. Curation (voting) is what decides who gets the rewards, and how much they get.

Voting on content (posts and comments) allocates a portion of the reward pool to the creator of that content. The more BP the curator has, the more reward is allocated to the content-creator from the pool. 168 hours (7 days) after a post or comment is made, its creator is paid out half the rewards. The other half of the rewards are paid out to the curator(s) of that content (everyone who voted on it during the 7 day period). Creators are paid half the rewards to encourage high-quality original content on the blockchain. Curators are paid the other half of the rewards to encourage discovery of that content, like a bounty for finding and compensating good posts and comments.

That's a lot to take in, but once you understand it, you've grasped what this platform does and how it works. The blockchain is a way to upload content and use human effort to locate and display the best of it. Micropayments of cryptocurrency, in this case BLURT tokens, are used to incentivize quality creation and curation.

Imagine John votes on Mary's comment, and his vote allocates 40 BLURT from the reward pool. When that comment is 168 hours old, voting ends, and both Mary (the creator) and John (the curator) are rewarded 20 BLURT each.

Another example. John, Mary, and Greg vote on Bill's post. John's vote allocates 40 BLURT from the reward pool. Mary's adds 20 BLURT. Greg contributes 10. When the post pays out, John is rewarded 20 BLURT, Mary gets 10, and Greg gets 5. Bill, as the creator, is paid 35 (20 + 10 + 5).

With a firm understanding of why voting on content is so vital to Blurt, let's now get into the specifics of timing our voting.

When to curate

We've seen that curation is vital to the functioning of the blockchain. Without it, nobody gets paid, and good content is not created or discovered. But there has to be a limit to how many votes each user can dish out - otherwise, someone could drain the limited reward pool and monopolize the earnings. That's why the blockchain limits how many votes each account can make.

You start with 100% voting power (VP). With each full vote made, your VP decreases by 2%. Your VP increases naturally (heals) at a constant rate of 20% per day. That means you can make 10 full votes every day without depleting your voting power. If you're at 100% power and leave someone a full vote, you'll go down to 98%. If you vote again immediately, that vote will only allocate 98% of the rewards the previous vote allocated. But if you wait 2.4 hours (2 hours and 24 minutes), your VP will be back at 100% again, and you'll allocate the full amount.

The lower your voting power, the less ability it has to allocate rewards from the pool. For example, if your votes normally give content 30 BLURT (currently 14 cents), and you deplete your VP down to 50%, your next vote will only allocate 15 BLURT (currently 7 cents). As you can imagine, keeping your VP as close to 100% is vital, as that is what determines how much you (the curator) and the person who made the post/comment (the creator) are paid.

You don't have to give a full vote to every post or comment you feel is worthwhile. When you go to vote, a slider bar appears, allowing you to allocate anywhere between 1% and 100% of your potential vote. There are presets at 10%, 25%, 50% (a half vote), 75%, and 100% (a full vote). You can dish out 10 full votes per day without depleting your power, but you can also do 20 votes at 50% strength, 100 votes at 10% strength, or any combination you like. Giving out less than a full vote means you're allocating less of the reward pool on that content, but conserves your voting power. There is some strategy there (both financial and social) that doesn't need to be discussed in this article. Unless you have a lot of BP (a lot of money invested in this blockchain), it's usually simplest to do full (100%) votes, which allows you 10 "free" every 24 hour period.

When your VP has healed to 100% for more than a moment, you are effectively wasting it. The platform as a whole doesn't care, because the reward pool - and the rewards paid out of it - are still the same size. It just means that you aren't participating in allocation of those rewards. The users you would have voted on don't benefit from your votes, and you don't get any curation rewards. So leaving your voting power at maximum slows your growth, and the growth of users you follow and interact with, but doesn't impact the blockchain itself.

Voting on content within the first 5 minutes throws away a portion of your curation rewards. The creator will still be allocated the same reward, but as the curator, you're penalized for voting too quickly. If you vote the moment the content has been made, you forgo the whole curation reward. If you vote after one minute, you lose 80% of the reward. If you vote in the second minute, you lose 60%. In the third minute, you lose 40%. If your vote is made in the fourth minute, you only lose 20%. And after 5 minutes, you get the full curation reward. This means you generally want to wait until at least 5 minutes after a post or comment is made before giving it your vote. Curation is meant to be done carefully and with consideration, not merely out of loyalty to another user or for your financial gain. This penalty allows the creator to make any quick edits, and encourages you to read it and not just blindly dish out a vote.

Likewise, there's a penalty for voting in the final 12 hours of the 7 day voting period. This is a holdout from Steem, where downvoting is possible, and supposedly allows punishment of dishonest voting strategies. It has no useful function on Blurt that I'm aware of, but the fact remains, it's best to avoid voting on content that is within 12 hours of payout.

That's how curation works, and from that we can figure out how to maximize our rewards by knowing when to vote.

Some guidelines for maximizing rewards you allocate to creators and to yourself as the curator:

• before voting, claim any pending rewards in your wallet (maximizes your BP)

• before voting, do any purchasing of BLURT, and any powering up you intend to do (maximizes your BP)

• do not vote within the first 5 minutes of a post or comment being created

• do not vote in the last 12 hours before a post or comment is paid out

• do not let your voting power sit at 100% for any length of time

• do not deplete your voting power below 90% (unless you aren't going to be available to vote again for more than 12 hours)

• don't help others optimize their voting habits (increasing how much they allocate from the reward pool reduces how much YOU can allocate from the reward pool)

By creating this post, I'm going against my final guideline! I could selfishly keep this knowledge off the blockchain, garnering myself a larger chunk of the reward pool and the rewards that come from it. But despite having a goal of reaching 1 million BP by the end of the year, and needing consistently-high curation rewards to have a chance of succeeding, I think it's important that everyone understand exactly how this works. Besides, if those who read my content become better curators because of this post, their growth will ultimately to some degree become my growth.

Takehome message

The absolutely most important way to increase your personal slice of the Blurt reward pool is to keep your voting power as close to 99.99% as possible, without letting it sit at 100%. This can be a bit of an art form, and everyone will have a different way of doing it. It may be useful to set an alarm, to remind you to return to the blockchain and hand out some votes. For example, if you're at 95% VP, you've got 6 hours before it will be healed to full (at which point it will start going to waste). If you know you're going to be away from the blockchain for 18 hours, deplete your VP by making votes until you're at 85%. If your VP is getting low but you know of some good content that deserves your vote, keep a note of it so that when your VP heals it will be the first thing you curate. Before long, you'll develop an inherent ability to know when it's time to check Blurt and distribute a vote or two!

With an understanding of how this all works, a bit of practice, and dedicating some time to curating properly, you'll be able to make almost all your votes in that "sweet spot" of 95 to 99.99%. When you do that, you're throwing away almost none of your potential income, and maximizing the growth of the users you feel are contributing the best content to the Blurt blockchain.

DRutter