RE: Rethinking Hive author rewards: How can we improve the distribution of rewards?

I see you have an erstwhile concern for Hive, and have considered these matters at length. I have also. Some things you haven't mentioned should be, so I will.

When this blockchain originated in 2016 as Steem the tokens were mined. Those folks that mined those tokens created all the stake there was and set about to distribute it to others to grow the platform by creating demand for the token. However, the platform is governed by the witnesses who run the code, and those witnesses are chosen by stake weighted voting. The ninjaminers that originally had all the stake wish to retain their governance of the platform that their possession of the majority of stake avails them. Because they determine which witnesses are in the top20 they determine how rewards are distributed from the inflation, and this is desirable for folks exercising prudent management of their assets. While the Founder's stake was sold to Sun Yuchen enabling him to arbitrarily rule the platform because that stake was the majority of tokens, because the rest of the ninjaminers did not want to lose their control of governance that @Ned had allowed them they forked the code and spawned Hive.

Hive was identical to Steem in how governance was maintained, a pure plutocracy, and the Founder's stake was replicated on Hive as the DHF, to fund development, as the Founder's had stated their ninjamined stake would be used for. After ~8 years, these ninjamined stakes retain plutocratic control of governance of Hive, and a critical tool in their arsenal is DV's, that enable them to prevent folks from accumulating stake from upvotes to threaten their possession of the majority of stake and control of governance. Clearly there is more to the story, and the bidbots, cash investors, and other issues have been involved along the way, but this is the basic outline of the journey that has brought us to where we are.

https://peakd.com/hive/@khrom/why-downvotes-contradict-decentralization-a-mathematical-perspective This post may help to explain how DV's maintain the majority stake of the governing oligarchy on Hive.

DV's are taxes. Just like pay from a job or contract work has taxes extracted from the gross pay before you can possess the net pay, rewards from upvotes can be taxed via DV's on Hive. On Hive anyone with stake can tax your earnings by DV'ing your posts and comments, to the limit of their stake. By this means the oligarchy has maintained it's majority stake and control of governance, but this has driven off ~1m people that came to the platform in 2017. Today, while the exact number is unknown for a variety of reasons, there are 3-5k human users on Hive, and perhaps millions of socks or bots that are controlled by some of those users, mostly by the oligarchs.

For folks that aren't numbered amongst the governing oligarchy, wider distribution of tokens is highly desirable. For that oligarchy, this is as wide as they want distribution to get. In order to broaden distribution, some limitations on taxation will have to be implemented. These limitations will have to be voluntarily approved by that oligarchy, because they control Hive and cannot be forced to do anything they don't want to do. Good luck convincing them to abandon their cash cow. Cash is king, and risking their proven production of ROI wouldn't be financially prudent.

Were there more people using Hive, it would be difficult for the oligarchy to prevent broader distribution of tokens, and were there less the tokens would have little value. This appears to be the happy medium they have arrived at to maximize their ROI and maintain their control of governance.

There are other issues I could address, such as curation rewards, autovotes, and more, but I have already bloviated too long.

Thanks!