Weeeeell in defense of pyramid schemes everywhere, typically as far as I know the way it would work is everyone is rewarded on a curve weighted to the top, so the more you invest the more you get. The scheme is that people are getting rewarded with all the new/bottom investments, and when that either dries up or can't keep up with the rate of distribution the whole thing falls apart and everyone except the top people get screwed.

So in the end we like to throw around the term "trustless" in the crypto space, but at least in Steem, there is a lot of trust in the top holders. Until there is more, for lack of a better term "wealth diffusion" we're skating on a bit of thin ice.