How it actually works, as opposed to how you see a 'ramp', is that your payouts are simply spread out over 5ND which is currently about 3 days.
You get paid for each share you submit, over the 3 days after you submit the share.
What this does is reduce the variance in your payouts.
Something like this if you think of it as submitting a share (s) each block:
s----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
s----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
s----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
s----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
s----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
Of course you keep submitting shares, so the gap appearing at the bottom doesn't begin until you stop mining e.g.:
s----+-----+-----+-----+-----+s----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
s----+-----+-----+-----+-----+s----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
s----+-----+-----+-----+-----+s----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
s----+-----+-----+-----+-----+s----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
s----+-----+-----+-----+-----+s----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
My simplified explanation was almost correct, but Kano's explanation is actually correct
Why does no one answer this aspect.. What is 5Nd is 9,365,527,376,108.0 How does it relate to "time" as everyone refers to it as. I get it is 5x the current difficulty, but What does it represent. I understand that the payout is shifted over the 5 blocks for the current found block.
Maybe I am thinking this is more complicated than what it is... Is it safe to say that if a block is found 1 per day at the exact same hour and minute, that the first block found is all paid out on the 5th day ( when the 5th block is found) and the day 2 block has only had 4 pays, and the third block found on the third day has 3 paid out? ***** And the variance comes in if the number of days is different between blocks say 2 then 3 or 7 days between each block but all different.?
Still does not explain what the 9,365,527,376,108.0 number is. I know its referred to as 5nd, but what Units? How does the number itself relate to the way its calculated, or is everyone saying things like " oh 16 day 5nd is a very long time" and just meaning, Man that took 16 days to find 5 blocks ?