I have noticed that useful posts can't get seen by most of the users until a whale upvotes it:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@anonymint/get-33-more-steem-for-your-steem-dollars

The design choice to give whales quadratic (votes x votes) influence coupled with the huge "pre"mine, seems to have crippled the utility of the site (either alone might have been okay). And apparently they had to do that for another reason, which is otherwise the free signups could be Sybil attacked and then users could amass 10 SP per free signup.

And that same design choice and "pre"mine is what is I think preventing a funding model that will actually work.

I think I see a catastrophic design error on their part, but I am not sure yet. I need to think this through deeply and carefully.