This is a great decision. While it is important that investors can earn - the core concept of the Austrian model - I think in recent years Hive has tailored its mechanics too much towards the investor side. A creator needs to know that their 2,000+ words CAN have the potential to earn a decent hourly rate. Otherwise you're going to end up with 450-550 words max on average. That's not even good enough for Google anymore.
And if earnings are too low no serious (freelance) creator will consider the platform as it publicly devalues their rate.
I wish to suggest one further evolution tho: a curve rewarding vote stacking but only on the best rewarded content - the threshold should be very high, like 400-450LEO at least in current distribution.
This could stimulate whales to actually look for that super awesome, and valuable, content rather than also consider a more philanthropic distribution.
There is a risk of pooling votes but at the same time the community will be vigilant with downvotes if an everyday brain fart gets rewarded +100LEO.
I think this could be trialed in a beta frontend which applies the stacking curve as a note on rewards, and is observed for few months, but without already being applied on Leo itself.
When appended to a linear curve there is no reason why whales wouldn't stack votes, but will they make truly awesome content moon and thus become potentially attractive to new, other finance authors. For smaller stakeholders this would slightly diminish their rewards but only a rather rare occasions. If it becomes a more frequent thing it will mean that Leo will have become a finance outlet with much more respectability than Business Insider and that will be reflected in token value.
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