Surprise! Preliminary findings show beating the crowd to high-quality content doesn't increase the size of your vote or curation reward. It seems that as long as you don't vote within the first 5 or last 720 minutes, your vote carries the same force. This finding goes against conventional thinking on Blurt, which is that curating early boosts the power of your vote.
Just a reminder that curation is about finding quality content, not about maximizing one's personal gains. We should be voting on high-quality original content that brings something to the platform, first and foremost, and thinking about curation rewards a distant second. That said, it's good to understand how things work, so we can make the best educated decisions possible.
Setup
From the post setting up this experiment: "Now we want to know if a vote is bigger (for the content and the curation rewards) if it comes BEFORE a lot of other votes, rather than after. Are we rewarded for being quick and accurate curators on Blurt?"
I created 2 comments below the article, voted on 1 of them, and asked readers to vote on both.
10 other users voted on both the test comments - big thank you to @mmmmkkkk311, @outofthematrix, @rubelynmacion, @medikatie, @amirl, @hangin, @oneray, @mk-sports-token, @mariuszkarowski, and @leifasaur. This wouldn't have worked if you hadn't pitched in!
48 hours later, voting on the comments had ended. One comment already had my vote:
The other did not:
I decided to end the experiment at that point, and voted on the other comment.
It received the same treatment as the other comment had 48 hours earlier - a 100% vote when I was at 100% Voting Power. I have not claimed rewards in the past day or two, to keep the size of my vote constant.
Results
As you can see, there are 13 votes on the second comment, and only 11 on the first. We ended up with 2 accounts that only voted on that one, totaling 38.3 BLURT. If we remove those votes, comment 1 got 323.8 BLURT and comment 2 got 234.3 BLURT, essentially the same.
The values in the comment I voted early changed only slightly:
But the vote values in the second comment went up significantly when I added my late vote:
Why did that happen?
As we found out recently, votes on popular posts are bigger.
Which explains why the values went up noticeably when I added my vote.
Now, let's compare the final vote values of the 2 comments against each other:
Essentially no difference! If anything, the "late" vote is worth more than the "early" one, but that can be explained by the fact that 2 extra accounts voted with the "late vote" (votes on popular content are bigger).
If curating early (identifying good content yourself, not just voting for whatever is already "Trending") is rewarded by the blockchain, I didn't find any evidence of it!
Discussion
Further experiments might detect some slight advantage to voting right at the 5 minute mark, but as it stands, there appears to be little point.
What really influences a vote's value is putting it on popular content. So apparently it's best to hold your votes back, see what succeeds and what doesn't, then dish them out on whatever is hot. That encourages a "rich get richer" situation, where votes pile on to whatever post is already doing well, even if that's because the user bought votes to make that happen.
It's quite possible that voting mainly on day 4 or 5 is the best strategy for those trying to maximize their impact (and curation rewards). If there's no reward for voting early, but there IS a reward for voting with the crowd, then as long as you're not letting your votes go to waste (maintaining voting power at 100%), it's probably best to wait and see what other curators do.
That's not necessarily good curation. I'm just reporting my findings, and that's how this blockchain appears to be set up.
So now we know that low Voting Power doesn't reduce profit, voting on popular posts increases profit, and voting early doesn't increase profit. (By "profit" I mean rewards for the creator of the content, and for you as a curator.) Put all together, a general mantra for curators might be:
Vote all posts that did well in their first few days, never letting your Voting Power recharge all the way to 100%.
For those who care mostly about maximizing their vote and rewards, that would be a good strategy on Blurt. Personally, I prefer to lead with my votes, rather than follow. Also, I don't think it's healthy for the community, because good curation is about finding quality content, not waiting for others to do it and then profiting off their effort. If we all did that, posts would get no votes at all, with everybody waiting to see what everyone else does!
So curate with your heart and your brain, not just your wallet. Vote early if you want to. Reward original content that adds value to the blockchain. Yes, half your vote comes back to you - that's compensation for your time, effort, and investment. Yes, voting with the crowd is easy and profitable. But curate because it improves the platform! And never be afraid to hunt for diamonds in the rough - you could make someone's day with your vote, and it might alert others to follow suit. That's a boost for everyone involved.
DRutter
Voting late on Blurt, and I found it really interesting. It's great that you took the time to investigate this topic and share your findings with the community.
I completely agree with your conclusion that voting late doesn't seem to have much impact on the rewards received by a post. It's important to note that while voting early can give a post a better chance of getting noticed, ultimately it's the quality of the content that will determine its success.
I also appreciate your suggestion to focus on engaging with the community and creating valuable content, rather than worrying too much about the timing of your votes. That's definitely a good mindset to have.
Thanks again for sharing your insights with us. Keep up the great work!
The experiment you conducted on Blurt and I think it's great that you're sharing your findings with the community. It's encouraging to see that voting late doesn't appear to matter much and that curation should be about finding high-quality content rather than maximizing personal gains.
It's commendable that you conducted this experiment to gain a better understanding of how the blockchain works and to make educated decisions when curating. Your mantra of "curate with your heart and your brain, not just your wallet" is a great reminder that curation should be about supporting original content that adds value to the platform.
I appreciate your efforts to encourage others to vote based on the quality of the content rather than following the crowd, and I hope others will take your findings into consideration when curating on Blurt.
Keep up the great work and thank you for sharing your insights with the community!
Your experiment is very valid and well-thought of. I just hope that it will not be used for the wallet as you have said but for the betterment of the community and the blockchain itself. People who made good, original content will get tired of if they will not be recognized.
Thanks for spending time for this experiment. It gives us more knowledge about blurt.
Well, than I won't be stressed about it anymore! Thanks for the time you put into this research!
Yup! Just spend your votes before you reach 100% VP, and don't worry much about the rest!
Thank you for your patience in exercising this experiment @drutter I have now learned more about blurt which is useful information indeed for us and the platform well done buddy.
My experience with this experiment went like this:
Where you had already voted, my vote had a weight of 5,854, but others had not yet voted, and now my vote has a weight of 6,602.
In the comment that you voted on later, my vote had a weight of 6,101 and ended up at 6,152.
Now, I also did a mini experiment with someone who would notify me right at the moment of publishing, to give my vote just after the 5 minutes were up, before blurtbooster and the ecosinthetizer account voted for it.
My vote (I was the first to vote) had a weight of 5,754, then came ecosinthetizer's votes, two more users and blurtbooster's, and when I checked, I found that my vote had reached 6,509.
Just now I just checked how it's going, and I find that 7 more users voted afterward, and my vote has a weight of 6,681...
So, I can see that early voting (at least in this example) helped my vote weight increase 0.827 more; I don't really know if this is called efficiency in Hive (I think so), but I've also upvoted posts there after 14 hours (and before strong votes) and the efficiency has gone up to 234%.
I'll show an image from the HiveStats tool with the healing gains, based on my vote weight (value) and the ratio of efficiency to healing reward.
I imagine that, being a sister chain, the behavior regarding healing must be the same.
Thanks for commenting about your own observations, Ray!
"My vote (I was the first to vote) had a weight of 5,754, then came ecosinthetizer's votes, two more users and blurtbooster's... my vote had reached 6,509... 7 more users voted afterward, and my vote has a weight of 6,681. So, I can see that early voting (at least in this example) helped my vote weight increase 0.827"
Your vote increased in size when other votes were added to the same post. We already determined that votes on popular content get increased, so what you are noticing is that effect. If you had voted after all those other votes, there would be no difference. I have proved that in this experiment - voting early does not have any advantage on Blurt. I invite you to try it yourself.
"I don't really know if this is called efficiency in Hive (I think so)"
The truth is, we have no idea what "efficiency" is referring to on that image. Do the creators of that software provide instructions or a key to understanding the terms? Until we know what they mean by that, it's hard to know how to interpret those numbers.
We also have to keep in mind that how it works on Hive is not the same as how it works on Blurt. Blurt is a copy of Steem, and Hive was also a copy of Steem, but all 3 blockchains have very different settings. Blurt does not allow downvotes, so many other aspects of the code had to be changed for it to function without abuse. If voting early on Hive increases vote size, that's a separate matter from how voting early on Blurt affects things. That's why I did this experiment, and the evidence shows that voting early does not have any beneficial effect here.
"the behavior regarding healing..."
I don't know what you are referring to when you use that word, but when I say "healing" I am referring to the way Voting Power naturally increases at 20% per day.
Congratulations!
You have recieved a coconutty upvote! 🥥
Thank you for contributing to the Blurt Blockchain!
Keep up the great work!
Curated by @outofthematrix!
Please take a moment to vote for my witness.
You can do this by logging into your wallet with your active key! 🗳️ https://blurtwallet.com/~witnesses?highlight=outofthematrix
Interesting finding thanks for the information.