I can't see these so - called 'bid bots' going away as long as there's profit to be made. Most of that goes to those who run them of course. I can appreciate that minnows are desperate for any attention, but a bidding war means you need hundreds of SBD to get in the trending page now. I hardly go there as its useless to me.
I see people compiling alternative trending pages of posts without paid votes. This is something that can be automated and we will probably see sites providing it. There are other ways to game the system, but we should do our best to support good content from genuine people.