I agree that we shouldn't jump back to ^2 rewards, but the issue is that linear rewards are easier to abuse.

Rather than go backwards, we should address the issue. The community disagrees with the valuation of certain posts. Thus, we need to validate large votes in order to protect the rewards pool and only give heavy rewards to those with large community support rather than a single self upvote or a large whale upvote.

I've suggested that we verify votes utilizing a vote verification scheme that compares the large upvotes to ones around it.

Certainly if an upvote is larger than the entire rest of the support for a single post, that is too much.

More generally, these are the approaches we should be making instead of arguing for flawed system #1 or flawed system #2. Pinpoint particular issues, find potential solutions, find flaws in those potential solutions, repeat.

Going backwards won't help the platform move forward.