In a way, it is already working as influence tokens.
Taking a look at @bellyrub's creator @zeartul
I can loan @zeartul my SDB or steem in the form of influence tokens. He/she can then use those tokens to upvote people and try to earn more curation/author rewards than he/she agreed to pay me back.
Currently, we do it as a "gentlemans's agreement". However, using something like Blockmason to automate it would take all risk out of it. I would be guaranteed to get my tokens back plus the agreed upon "interest"
Agreed, so what happens if lets say you don't pay back the SBD that was borrowed, how will you enforce some sort of punishment; how are you guaranteed to get your tokens back?
For Real.
With Blockchain, you should be able to do that programmatically. So, as part of the contract, the funds are locked or something.
You don't need to enforce punishment for non-repayment. Just like in today's credit markets, non-payment is enough to alert other lenders that you are a bad risk. This could affect your ability to secure other things, like renting a home or a car as well.
I work in Real Estate and property management, and have analyzed many people's credit histories to determine if we can rent a property to them or not. Your reputation is paramount to that decision. While the person who lent the money is out of luck regarding the non-payment, the rest of the world is on notice about the bad risk of the borrower and the loan issuer knew the risk they were taking when they made the loan.
A prudent loan issuer would reflect the risk they took on an unknown or poor reputation borrower by charging a higher interest rate, by limiting the size of the loan, or by breaking the loan into smaller blocks of issuance at different times while the borrower proves their ability to repay.