There are many people in the community that feel strongly that the current distribution of stake is preventing the platform from scaling to billions of users. There is pretty much no incentive for a 'regular user' to buy SP, because even a relatively large investment of a few thousand dollars does not provide practically any influence.
Figuring out a way to make the platform more appealing to 'regular users' to invest is really a key issue that needs to be solved if we all want our stake to grow in value.
The million dollar question is how do you achieve this in a way that is fair to the original stakeholders, and does not open the doors to abuse. Here is a post with some thoughts on the subject: Would you be willing to give up some of your influence, in exchange for earning additional interest on your balance above 250 MV?
The initiative that @abit is doing is an agreement with many of the whales to not vote for a period of time, as an experiment to see what happens when the dolphins+minnows get more influence. It is an experiment. It is not the solution to the problem.
The experiment will only work though if all the whales participate. If only some whales abstain from voting, and others continue to vote - then the ones who continue to vote will just have way more influence. The only solution to this is to convince them to stop voting, or to counter their upvotes with downvotes.
If the experiment helps the community to reach a consensus on a solution to the stake/voting issue, then it will be doing everyone a great service. We need to figure this out / get this right in order for the platform to scale.
IMO, one of the bigger problems of the experiment is lack of communication, so I am trying to help out with that.
Disclaimer:
I am not running the experiment, and I am not personally involved. Everything below is just personal views, observations, and opinions.
What is the goal of the experiment?
Based on my understanding, it is to try and see what happens if the whales do not vote and the dolphins+minnows get to control the rewards pool.
How long will the experiment last?
I don't know.
Isn't all the downvoting going to be bad for the platform?
The goal is not to have to downvote. If whales do not upvote, then the other whales will not have to downvote to counter.
The experiment will only work though if all the whales participate. If only some of the whales participate, then with the n^2 voting algorithm - it will just give the whales who do vote a ton more power. The experiment only works if none of the whales are voting.
Are the whales still allowed to upvote at all?
Yes. If they upvote with an appropriate vote weight so that their upvotes equal that of a dolphin, then the experiment will still work.
Will less rewards be paid out because the whales are not voting?
No. The platform will still pay out the same amount of rewards, regardless of how many/few whales vote. The only difference is that upvotes from dolphins and minnows will now have more influence on where those rewards are allocated.