Are far as I understand it and seen it pitched, the curve has nothing to do with bid bots.

I'm just going by what I've read on @steemitblog posts and their comment sections, in the posts and comment sections of other users, and in off-chain chats.

The curve is to prevent discourage large stake holders from splitting their stake to smaller accounts and voting their own spam.

Yeah...it would have been great if this same reasoning wasn't summarily dismissed by Ned/STINC back in 2017 when they rammed linear rewards down our throats without ever addressing why there was a wholesale change of protocol rationale and coherence.

Oh, wait...Ned did explain it a few times by saying previous protocols were "evil." So there's that, I guess.

Anyway...for the record: I don't care that a lot of people favor these changes because they think it will impact bid bots. I am in favor of more-than-linear and 50/50 rewards because it just makes sense economically and because of the ability to mitigate "abuse."

I was in favor of these protocols 2.5 years ago when I wrote about them. Hopefully, we'll get back to some of the rest of those ideas that were ignored back then and actually improve things around here. I doubt anything meaningful will happen though. It seems that Steem may be headed for obsolescence due to a plethora of "leadership" mistakes and non-existent marketing. If we're lucky though, maybe this place could be fun again in the distant future.