I think this idea is along the lines that needs to happen, the only thing i am not sure of is the buyout at the end....hmmmmm it could be good...
Here's something to consider that a different app does which i think is good:
you earn $8 per every referral, but they have to be active, meaning there has to be some threshold reached in order to receive the referral money...so maybe it's a certain number of comments and/or posts......so this system would only reward people who bring in active people....This would greatly reduce abuse. I'm looking forward to an affiliate system for Hive...