The current incentive scheme encourages people to upvote those who already have power and thus giving them even more power.
I'm fine with the fact that whales have significantly more voting power. This is the way it needs to be: they've earned their power either by producing valuable content or by investing (and risking) their funds.
The problem
However, it's hard for me to accept this phenomena: people (and bots) upvoting posts by whales just because they were published by whales. Not because of the content of the post. Not even because of the expected quality of the post. It's mainly because a whale has voting power and it pays off to support those with power.
I don't blame people (and bots) for doing this - they do it because this behavior is explicitly encouraged by the current incentive scheme: a post by a whale is likely to be upvoted by the author himself / herself and if you upvote it early enough you get part of the reward as well.
As a result, whales with power get more and more power. They get richer just because they are already rich. Don't you think this is quite wrong? Don't you think it will turn people off once they realize this?
The solution
If I understand it correctly, currently there is a 50/50 split between authors and curators. What if we added an extra condition: as a curator you get your reward only if the post you have upvoted scores better (within e.g. 2 or 3 hours) than the average payout made by the author in the past (e.g. 2-3 weeks)? If it scores below the average, your vote is wasted and the reward you would have normally received is recycled to the reward fund and you get nothing for your curation effort.
An example
I notice that dantheman has just published a post. I can upvote it regardless of its quality but I'll risk that my voting power might be wasted this way. Instead I am encouraged to actually read the post and make a quick estimate in my head if this time dantheman is likely to receive more for this post than he usually does.
It'a a kind of a simple prediction market but without all the hassle usually associated with it. It discourages people from blindly upvoting the whales and it addresses the bot problem as well.
What do you think?