Competition's good in general. So far, Voice has a PR campaign, not the product. We'll see when it actually launches the network. To be a pioneer is both advantage and disadvantage - you grab the pole position but the others have someone to backbite and smear. Also, they can learn from the leader's mistakes.

50/50 split of rewards ain't no good in my point of view. I understand that it shall be a support of "passive" users' curating. By that i mean those who barely create themselves but who are happy to support their favorite authors. After the HF, they are going to have a chance to get some reward even if they have just a bit of SP. That's my thought if I had to come up with a pro argument. Still, I consider it to be rather undue.

"Free" downvotes aren't bad at all, I guess. Downvote is just a tool and there's always a man using the tool...