Just following up from our Discord discussion. My suggestion was to analyze actual rate of distribution from new whales list to determine whether Hive distribution is consolidating or expanding. Historically distribution has expanded over time, but much of this was driven by @misterdelegation support of various dapps that consistently upvoted their users.
Without that, do the new whales provide enough community support to expand distribution, or do the rewards they share with the community pale in comparison to the curation/author/witness rewards that they collect? Since there isn't enough post-fork data to establish a trendline yet, we can extrapolate based on the current behavior of top 100 whales. Are they collecting more in rewards than is generated from the inflation dilution of their stake?
Thank you!!
With the change to the rewards in hard fork 21 I think it was the curve given to the rewards, The top tier (high roller) gain much more than the lower user, The lower user now give much less in a reward to gain curation reward from, The top tier gain extra % that was removed from lower levels.
That's an important factor... but the deciding factor is whether top accounts are voting more for users outside the top 100 than they are receiving from author and witness rewards.