Of course those attempting to game the system will attempt to screw things up. That's just what they do.
Vote selling may continue but who will buy? Spend 20, have 22 placed beside the post. They'd need to earn 9 in organic votes just to break even. Sounds kind of silly to me, but I'm sure a few noobs will fall for it, then feel ripped off, blame the platform, leave, like they do now.
How would that be worth more to the content producer as opposed to the one leaving the vote?
If I leave a vote worth 10 cents on a comment, I'd now get 5 cents. $1.00, I'd get $0.50. It adds up.
I'm not sure how much profit there would be in selling votes. Spend $100, receive $115, lose half = $57.5. A poor quality boosted post would have to earn $42.5 in organic votes just to break even. If the SP is already locked away ready to be sold, who's going to be able to put $42.5 on a shit post organically? Minnows?
The higher they go, the worse it gets. Those votes would have to be sold for less if someone just wanted to buy votes hoping to squeak tiny profits out of low effort work like they do now. Spend $5, have $10 placed beside the post, lose $5. Break even. Is $10 worth of reward worth $5? I can't see them making much money selling votes that way. Those members with their own SP to use could easily just vote for quality work in a timely manner and earn more per vote because the odds are more votes will trickle in after theirs if the post has potential. To me, it sounds like curation would compete with vote selling, and curation rather than selling would come out with more potential profits.
Thanks for the explanation. That makes more sense to me now. I'm all for it because I curate and post equally already so in theory my earning would be about the same. I think so anyway.