Thank you for pointing me out to this post by Dan. I had already read it before probably more than once but that is exactly what I was looking for without knowing about it.
Steem minimizes the ability of minnows to cheat by distributing rewards proportional to n2. This means minnows have far less influence relative to their weight and whales have far more influence. This means that minnows only have influence when they work together.
By requiring people to work together to gain influence we bias rewards toward common causes that grow the pie. It doesn’t make sense to collude with others if you must share the reward. It will lower the profitability of defecting and make it more likely to get noticed and countered by others.
A whale is effectively the same as a large group of minnows colluding together. In this case the whale can act more efficiently and doesn’t have to worry about defectors.
The larger the group of whales and minnows agreeing to a particular payout the less likely that the payout is harmful to the pie and the more likely it is beneficial.
The solution to a lot of Steem woes seems to reside in the non linear reward curve.
Dan's latest comment on the blockchain is about exactly that aspect.
I have always been against the linear curve and am sad that the community voted for it.[1]
Why did you stumble on that post by Dan? Were you going through all his posts titles?
I've been having some interesting conversations with users that were here prior to the fork that changed the rewards to the current linear curve.
It seems to me that if we really wanted to keep the original vision of Steemit we should at least attempt to find a way to retain the core ideas Dan had for Steem. I've been told by a few Steemians that there is absolutely no way we are going back to non linear, but I thought it valuable to attempt to work out a solution to our current problem with what we have currently.
I believe its time well spent to read thru Dan's old posts, I never met the man and probably never will, but its obvious he is a bright guy and not just in the technical sense which of course pretty obvious. He might have come up with a way actually solve social issues and wealth distribution in one go, and to think that code could do that is a bit mind blowing to me.
To answer your last question, i just now found the giant post with blocktrades... its going to take me a while to read, but I intend to do so.
I've read 95% of Dan's post on Steem. I think you might like this one I wrote about Dan if you haven't read it. It's 80%+ quotes from Dan.
https://steemit.com/liberty/@teamsteem/thank-you-dan-larimer-you-are-a-great-mentor
On my way to read it.. MSP show is over! :)