Those who will receive the downvotes are more likely to "retaliate"
I'm sure those doing the downvoting will be aware of this, if not there's always going to be a lot more upvoting power to help undo what others may find was unfair downvoting due to retaliation. There could even be guilds spawning to do just that.
do we really need a 50/50 reward system to wake up the whales and be more active?
How much stake is locked up in bid bots/other right now? 50 million SP? 80? It's not news that everyone will go for what is most profitable to them, in this day and age it is also pushing those that would want to curate to do the same thing cause else they're left with lower stake in the end than those going for max ROI and not caring about curation and rewarding authors.