I believe the original intention behind the exponential influence increase relative to Steem Power was to incentivize large account holders to keep all their Steem Power in one place, as opposed to spread out over a bunch of different sock puppet accounts. But all benefit to that pretty much got wiped out with the whale experiment. I mean, what is the point in having enough SP to deliver a $300 upvote when you're not allowed to use it? So if the whales can't use their full strength upvotes, then it makes sense to move to a more linear rewards curve. It will be interesting to see if doing so leads to any sort of increase in sock puppet accounts bot voting behind the main account. Assuming it works as planned, I'm all for greater equality at the bottom.