I like what you have written in this post and the points you have made.

In my opinion, the five minute rewards curve, in combination with autovoting makes the oligarchical system within decentralised platforms such as this, a glaring fault, and only makes the issue even more obvious. A lot of people with large stakes, who have their buddy circles developed won't like to hear that, but it's a fact of how things work. We can talk about community as much as we like, but if the same people constantly vote themselves in circles, then you won't be getting a mass of new users to onboard.