Hive Blog Rewards Will Need to Go
Maybe what is needed is a reworking of the rewards system as opposed to doing away with them.
If the concept is "proof of brain", then perhaps rewards could be weighted by how sure we are that the action (upvote/downvote/etc) was a non-automated manual action by a living brain. This could give the edge to the brain of a minnow over the automation of a dolphin.
How might one decide if an action is a non-automated manual one? A distributed CAPCHA system was discussed somewhere in my distant archive on the Chain, if memory serves. It's an interesting programming challenge to be able to identify proof of brain while not holding up traffic.