There is no extra df, you introduced an extra pool (df:=df+1) but also a new rule that you can only vote in one of those (df:=df-1)
I would say there is, because someone can split their vote via separate accounts.
Also, I am not explicitly saying the delayed auto-vote plays no role in the early-vote pool. Although I didn't explicitly lay out fine details (because I wanted to focus discussion on the big-picture concept), my current thinking would be that the delayed auto-vote percentage might be around 40% (slightly less than a linear reward of 50%) with 10% going to the early-vote curation pool. That 10% would then be subject to manipulation by delayed-auto-voting bots (by splitting votes across two accounts, one voting early one voting later).
Thanks for the thoughtful analysis.
If I understand your analysis correctly, the biggest manipulation via self-playing with split votes is 50% curation reward instead of 40%, which is same as linear reward. If they want to go that route they can just early and late vote random comments and snag the 50%. Maybe that's not a bad thing? That being the case, police bots could easily search out those and dilute them. Or maybe let whales forfeit voting rights in exchange for 50% auto reward and 50% spread across all author rewards.
Some will still try to game other people's votes, but it seems to me that the incentive to do that goes down (relative to current protocol) because the late voting bots are contributing only 10% to the nonlinear pool instead of 50%.
What keeps a large stakeholder (today) from authoring a random comment via a separate account then posting an early vote from yet a different account, then posting a large last minute upvote.
Wouldn’t that gain the person 100% of his voted rewards? And couldn’t that all be done by a bot?