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You are assuming everyone votes in the same frequency, and therefore withholding votes from whales will increase the value of the votes by minnows.

But what if minnows don't vote?

Say you have 1000 users, 5 of whom are whales, 10 of whom are dolphns and the rest are minnows. Minnows soon realize that no matter how much they vote, they don't get a curation reward. So they stop voting.

So all the curation is done by whales and dolphins, who are all voting about 40 times a day, distributing 600 votes a day, some of which are spead widely, but a lot concentrated on a few posts.

Now restrict the votes to 5 a day. the minnows still won't vote as it is not worth their while, they don't earn curation awards. So voting is left to the whales and dolphins, as before. But now they can only distribute 30 votes in total. Most of which will be concentrated on a few posts -as each of these votes will give a large reward, those few posts will earn fabulously. The rest will get zip.

The whole premise of the change is based on the flawed idea that everyone is voting. Everyone isn't voting, only a few people are, and forcing them to concentrate on only a few articles means that the entire pot will get distributed to the lucky few they bestow their vote on.

You keep saying "minnows will benefit" but no-one with less than 1000 steempower earns curation awards. Minnows will not vote because by definition they have less than 100 steempower, new users get 3 steempower. Telling people "you are going to get 8 times more of zero than you do now" is a bit daft, no? It would need to increase by a factor of 10 to 300 to make it worthwhile.