It's good to see the new system doing what it should. I'm not sure if bid bots were anticipated when Steem was conceived, but they have spoiled the proof of brain concept.
We are still seeing posts with paid votes on trending that are not getting downvoted much because they are about Steem and by more respected Steemians, but we new a better mix of trending posts. Big accounts should vote up quality content with a broad appeal to attract new users. Some should be giving themselves less self votes too in my opinion. We shall see how this evolves.
We're sort of a collective start up for an attempt to make a decentralized social media that is tied together with an economic system – something never seen before, so it's no wonder there's going to be unforeseen problems. There's no roadmap or guidebook how to make this stuff, all we can do is to ride through unknown territory and adjust on the way.