Hi @timcliff,
thanks for contributing code to the Steem project - I cannot agree more on your blog that we need many more freelancing developer in order to become more independent from Steemit, Inc.
If you REALLY have some spare time for another pull request, you could look into this Steem protocol improvement proposal here:
https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@steemhq/how-to-make-steem-great-again-the-exponential-author-reward-method
I really think this could be a game changer for Steem and could fix a lot of problems we currently see on the platform.