Observations on Abitgate

It has been fun. These are my (flawed) personal observations. Flame away!

So, it begins.

Immediately, there's a longer tail on the Trending page, very few posts exceed $40.
Minnows and dolphins are cautiously optimistic.

The effects start to show.

Dolphins and minnows are excited by their suddenly dramatic increase in the value of their votes.
Bots dominate. Their influence is significantly increased, particularly the whale-bots.

The flag wars begin to counter non-compliant whales. Many users are upset, while others find it refreshing. It's very divisive, but there's hardly a consensus. Many support the no-whales initiative, but can't stomach the flags.
New users are utterly baffled. (some of the replies to smooth's auto-comment are highly entertaining)
Dolphin curators break into the Top 100 by Rshares influence. Their trails are now worth over a dozen cents.
Active voters exceeds 5,000 for the first time since the December surge.
Comments see a dramatic rise as well - highest since September.

Authors who have strong minnow/dolphin support rise to the Trending page. These are truly the most popular authors on Steemit. Whales mistakenly downvote these authors even though they don't have any whale/bot votes. Conversely, authors that rely on the support of a couple of whales are lost. Some of them even quit.
The tail is so long that most posts get lost. On the bright side, they at least make a few pennies lost in the void.

Many regular dolphin/minnow curators stop curating, bots and humans alike. Some of the previously most influential bots stop as well. The reason is simple - without whales to frontrun the ROI is pretty minimal.
Meanwhile, near-whales / orcas take advantage and increase their curation efforts; new bots emerge.
The Trending page is a mess - it used to be much more representative of the community's content before.
Casual curators continue enjoying their dramatically increased influence.

The quadratic voting algorithm is overly skewed and hostile to community engagement.
People vote much more when their votes are worth something. (Side-note: They may also be more incentivised to power up, though I don't have any data to back that up. Pointers welcome.)
A disparity in voting power is essential for the predictive curation game - just not quadratic. Linear might be the best compromise. Of course, we have to question the value of a predictive game in the first place and whether there's a better system of rewards to better reflect good curation.
Effective curation is essential for organizing content on the platform. (Of course, the Communities feature is crucial)
All you need to do to increase engagement is stir shit up.