The real purpose of n^2 was to incentivize people to buy lots of STEEM and power up one account. But when talking about it now, people focus on the anti-sybil part and gloss over the “buy lots of STEEM part.” And n^2 probably rarely inspired anyone to buy lots of STEEM because that aspect was basically only noticed by people who read and understood that part of the white paper.
n^2 also counteracted Diminishing Marginal Utility, (Where each additional unit of an asset is valued less than the previous one) and encouraged curators to upvote posts which had already seen some success.
(There's currently nothing to be made by upvoting a post once it's hit $50, so nobody does; so there's nothing to be made by upvoting a post once its hit $40; so nobody does...)
I loved n^2. It took me from Casual reader of the white paper to Heavily invested Steem maniac.
You were there. Who championed n^2?
R^2 was pretty broken. I'm not a fan, but R^(something larger than 1 but smaller than 2) seems really good. It's enough to incentivize the same kind of behavior, but not to the point where it breaks voting for anyone without a 5% stake in the token.
I forget who it was who “championed” it. He was really vague about it, but basically described the desired effect. Some YouTuber early in the launch.
Dear @mattclarke
Correct me if I'm wrong, but would that also mean that those who upvote comments will have it even harder and their votes will be bringing less rewards?
Yours
Piotr