Thank you for the clear explanation! Kudos to Steemit Inc for listening to feedback and implementing it relatively quickly.

The parameter 10* a sounds good to me - 40* a does still seem too biased towards mega-whales.

We should also think of this as a price-demand situation. By making a 100-500MV stake more attractive, we may get many more buyers and thus overall volume. Sure, that'll reduce the incentive for powering up 10 BV, but very few can afford that, and Steem is hardly a Giffen good.

PS: I'd say most abusers are in the <10MV range; maybe you can add some figures for that too. My guess is the penalty/efficiency won't be drastically different between the different parameters at that level. If that's the case 40* a is effectively just penalizing dolphins and smaller whales.