Do you know how the new 15 minute curation window, and reverse auction works? Many people are under the impression that if we vote early, our curation rewards (or our lost curation rewards which used to go to the author) go to back into the rewards pool, and that we should only be voting after the 15 minute mark. As I understand it, this is not true. I will try to explain why here. When HF20 was first announced, in @steemitblog's post here, there were 2 key sections dealing with the curation window shrinking from 30 minutes to just 15, and also how the lost curation rewards are dealt with. Many people didn't read into the second part that only the lost curation rewards from the author's self-vote returns to the rewards pool. Here are the paragraphs:

30-minute Curation Window

Steem account holders (including bot accounts) are currently disincentivized by the Steem blockchain from voting on a post within the first 30 minutes. The earlier a vote is made within the initial 30-minute window, the less curation rewards the voting account receives. This was originally introduced to even the playing field between human curators and bots during a time when the majority of the content on Steem was long-form written content.

While successful, much has changed on Steem since that time. Steem now hosts all kinds of content, and powers hundreds of decentralized applications which dramatically expand the types of content that can be consumed on Steem. Because of this, the community and the witnesses have come to a consensus that the 30-minute rule is taking curation rewards away from human voters who are actively consuming content and voting on material they like. For this reason, the Velocity Hardfork will reduce the curation window from 30 minutes to 15 minutes.

The post then goes on to address self-voting rewards:

Self-Voting Rewards

According to the current blockchain rules, if authors vote for themselves immediately, they get their author rewards, 100% of the curation rewards from their vote, and a portion of the curation rewards coming from everyone who votes for the post after them. Any other curator voting at the same time as the author would get 0% of the curation rewards. This gives the author an unfair advantage over other curators, because the author can earn additional curation rewards through self-voting.

In order to eliminate this advantage, the portion of curation rewards that is not given to the curators due to the early voting penalty will be returned to the rewards pool instead of being awarded to the author, thereby increasing the overall percentage of rewards paid to curators. This will better serve the original mission of the curation rewards budget: to ensure that the Steem blockchain distributes rewards to the most valuable content.

My Explanation:

The 30 minute window dropping to 15 minutes is easy to understand. There is a timeline where when you vote for a post in the first 15 minutes, a portion of that upvote value, which would usually go into the post curation pool, goes to the author instead. There earlier you vote, the bigger portion of the upvote value goes to the author, and therefore less goes to the curation pool, until a 75%/25% author/curation reward split sets in from the 15 minute mark.

The tricky bit now is this; A lot of us also though that if we vote early, the lost curation reward, which used to go to the author, now goes back into the rewards pool. This is not true. The section dealing with the lost curation value is specific to the author's self-vote only. The lost curation rewards from an author's self-vote no longer goes to the author, but to the rewards pool. Authors, therefore, can only receive 75% of their own vote value when voting on their own posts. Only the author's lost curation value is removed from the post curation rewards, not all early votes. non-authors who vote early will still see their lost curation rewards going o the author.

Here is a little chart I made, which may be useful to you:

If you're curating a blog, and happen to vote before the 15 minute mark, you will add less value to the curation rewards, but still add value to the author rewards. It does not go back into the reward pool. That's the way I understand it.

You maximize the curation reward pool value by voting after 15 minutes, but like the pre-hf20 reverse auction worked, it still pays to be slightly ahead of the voting pack if you're not the author. The magic mark was highly debated and accepted to be around the 18 to 20 minute mark back then, and I'd say based on that, the magic mark now is somewhere between 12 and 15 minutes to maximize your curation potential. That also depends on who votes before you. It's always better to jump in before the whales cast their votes, either way.

That's the way I understand it right now. Feel free to correct me if you can explain why I'm wrong. If you found this helpful, don't be shy to give it a resteem.

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