I am considering doing this once I am done re-reading the white paper and make sure I understand the specifics of how this could or could not be gamed. Because I also have access to 1000 of people I could Sybil attack this with, so I am looking at my options now, because CoinHoarder pissed me off.
I am beginning to think that Dan has rigged this such that it is impossible for the minions to ever gain enough rep power to game the system. He has I think retained the control in his own hands. A permissioned block chain. That is what I would expect from him.
If that is the case, then I another bit of my respect for smooth will die because of his involvement in this scheme. But I need to confirm first the details...I understand making a profit but given how moralistic he has been about coins and knowing he is smart enough to have studied the details, then he should have been pointing out these matters long ago but apparently didn't because he was vested.
There is no question that insiders have absolute control now. They have said so, and it is obvious from the transparent holdings on the blockchain.
What the future holds, nobody really knows. Where you and I differ is that I don't believe I have the ability to predict the outcome of extremely complex systems with many people involved. That said, most new businesses fail, most cryptocurrencies fail, so objectively speaking the odds for Steem are not good. I'm willing to let it play out though, and see where it goes. Nothing else I've seen here has made even a remotely credible effort to reach a mainstream audience. Steem has at least done that, even if flawed, and even if it fails.
Where can I view the holdings?
https://steemit.com/@steemit/transfers
That is the account that collected the "sneaky-mine" coins (originally about 80%, but less now). It does not post, does not vote, and does not receive rewards. It's purposes are to serve as a source of coins to fund free accounts for new users, to sell coins on exchanges to fund development, and to serve as an asset of Steemit Inc, allowing the company to profit from the success of the platform. The first two of these obviously redistribute stake, and do so in a reasonably transparent way.
The R^2 weighting does not work the way you suggest. Yes, posts are R^2 weighted, but users are not. i.e. two users with N stake both voting on a post have about the same total voting power as a single user with 2N stake.
It does indeed lead to a narrower distribution of rewards with most going to a relatively few "hit" posts. That's a marketing decision in part (big payouts attract attention and interest even if most users don't get them), but something superlinear is necessary to prevent the obvious failure mode where people just vote for their own posts (but no one else does) in order to continue to gain a proportionate share of the rewards. The way it has worked out, the most successful posts have far more stake voting for them then any single user or even any small group of whales. You can't just vote to grab rewards and prevent dilution.
In practice, most of the rewards are going to successful and talented bloggers who have joined the site since launch. I expect that as the site grows and pulls from an even larger talent pool of posters and bloggers, the current ones may be pushed aside, at last to an extent, in favor of the greater talent and stronger celebrity status. Maybe that is a bad thing, since talent and celebrity is somewhat narrowly distributed, but in any case it isn't going back to large early stakeholders. We're all being diluted, and at a pretty good clip too.