As a long term plan for the platform, it is not going to be good to depend on the same ~50 people to decide on what gets rewarded. It is not scalable to a large number of users, and lots of good posts fall through the cracks. It is going to be better for the community if the user base can drive rewards.

What would you rather spend your time doing- trying to grow your followers and gain more interaction with the community, or spend your time whale hunting , hoping to be one of the lucky ones to get noticed by a whale?