I'm not 100% sure, but from what I understand...
You had to send bytes to people so they could afford to verify their Steemit usernames. That's how you got the reward. However, the ref-links doesn't matter at all. Anyone can just download the wallet, using any link, and people would compete trying to send the smallest amount of bytes to these people. When they did, they got the ref and also the reward. No matter where the user came from.
So new users are basically getting bombarded with byte-transfers as soon as they signup. And if you are lucky, you'll be the last person to send bytes to a new user, and if you're the last person, you'll be the one who get the commission. And there's obviously bots doing this too, so it's definitely not fair.
Sounds like the best way to teach these bots a lesson is to sign up a bunch of accounts and let them deplete their bytes by sending to accounts that have no intention of claiming the Byteball Steem reward.
Thanks, it's actually the last part I didn't work out, about the last person sending that got the commission. Terrible execution by the Byteball team, and if they could make such an amateurish mistake with a simple referral scheme...........
Thanks for the clarity!