Linear rewards isn't what caused the situation with bid bots today. If we switched back to the old curve now that bidbots control the majority of the stake, we would be in an even worse shape as the real contents (ones who dont pay for bidbot) would earn $0.00 and the network would practically become a racket.
The issue is how easy it is to game the distribution algorithm today, and to determine exactly the payout the vote will generate. It's 75% because of author rewards, and the rest is because curation is way too simple and flat in terms of returns for big stake holders. My intent is to try a new algorithm where bots struggle to be efficient, even on linear rewards, without having to trust the whales to maintain the system. Linear rewards is a dream we should try to make come true :)
I didn't say linear rewards is the cause of the bidbots but I do think linear rewards while it had good intentions, had the opposite effect. It seemed to work in the beginning but then somehow human beings stopped curating and bots took over. With the bots now it doesn't work at all.
Linear rewards don't seem to work unless you can prove each account is human controlled and that all curation is done by actual brains and not bots. Linear rewards without KYC level verification of accounts is what led to the situation now I think. A whale could game the system before but we could see it, while now a whale can game the system in ways we cannot see it because any small account could be owned by the same whale.
Wouldn't a maximum Vote Power Cap for Steem do the same? Maybe based on the Network activity. That could break the SP Stacking in Whale Upvote Bots. Or make SP getting duller, maybe even in a logarithmic way.