You can't claim that the reward pool is paid by the whales until their share is greater than everybody else's.
9.5% makes me every bit as invested as any whale.
Is his dollar amount higher?
Not in proportion, it is equal.
I pay just as much as anybody.

That said, I don't want to change anything but the floor of value on the platform.
If it takes 6 months for me to get to .002usd, I am kidding myself that I will ever make it $20.
That could be content related, and is certainly biased by personality, I get that.
But, the newbs are not gonna stick around, for the most part, if they have to take 10 years to get to $2 worth of influence.

My proposal is to move the bottom up two decimals and check the data for the next few months to see if that makes a difference.
These major changes chasing goals that will never happen, making us all happy, will only drive more folks to abandon the platform.
Especially once they have to wait 7 days to get it.
A terrible idea, imo.
Maybe three wouldn't be as bad, but definitely not 7.
How would you feel if after waiting for seven days you find out that your payout didn't even make it on the ui despite having 50 votes, which is the reality for 40% of authors.

Does that mean that Steem goes to zero?
Nah, the true beliebers will continue to carry the torch.
But if we can avoid shooting ourselves in the foot with changes that don't need changing, that will help.
A lot of thought and work has gone into getting the platform here, let's tweak it, not dissect and genetically modify it?

Thanks for adding perspective on why the trendys trend.
We should be rewarding r&d, and those that go above and beyond for the good of the ecosystem.
'Picking out gems' is low on my list of things that need support.