The reward system is unique, and probably much more fragile than people realize. If one person figures out how to game it, you can be sure that there will be many others who will follow in his footsteps.
Once people start making money in a certain way, they will get angry if that source of income is taken away. So just expect these reactions. However, anger doesn’t make them right.
The rewards need to come for the right reasons. And the reward system needs to support the ongoing growth and financial stability of the platform. Or else it folds and disappears. A couple parasites can kill the host.
By the way, it’s nice to assume “innocent” motivations here. However, there are a large number of outside actors who would have an interest in damaging the platform: 1.) Any entity who hates cryptocurrency and wants to see it fail; 2.) Any large platform (like YouTube?) that is watching users leave and desires monopoly power; 3.) Any other actor who wants to buy the platform, but at a firesale price (which would come if the rewards system breaks down).
On your last point 3) steemit.com maybe could be bought, I guess. But it isn't a corporation like "Wal-mart" or "amazon"
the main steem/steemit developers hold a huge amount of steem. But instead of selling the steemit host servers, they can just sell some of their Steem holdings at anytime. They can send it to Bittrex and get cash easily. I don't think a "firesale" can ever happen.
ANd even if Steemit inc did somehow sell out. All true steemit or steem blogging users can easily move over to one of the other FRONT ENDS that run on the Steem blockchain. There would be no value in a Steemit that was run by a private organization.
"The reward system is unique, and probably much more fragile than people realize. If one person figures out how to game it, you can be sure that there will be many others who will follow in his footsteps."
THIS is why I am standing up. Haejln is not the first nor will he be the last. but if no one "stops" his bad behaviour, then MANY MANY MANY more will come in to do the same and THEY WILL destroy the platform.