Good post.

Out of curiosity, what if the savings wallet was used for this also, where a holder of Hive could put non-governance potential Hive into the savings wallet to attract a percentage return as if it was active stake, but instead of paying out curation in Hive it paid out the "relative HIVE curation" in Hive converted to HBD.

It would make sense that this Hive wouldn't attract the same percentage as active stake, but perhaps 50-70% of the average return on "full curation". This would generate more HBD to trade, while reducing the inflation on Hive. If HBD drops significantly below 1, it can pay out in HIVE instead, which it would have earned as active stake anyway in curation. It would also give a reason to semi-stake HIVE on-chain instead of on-exchange and still have a 3 day (or shorter) unlocking period, keeping it within reach for trading if they choose .

Wouldn't this make HBD more "HIVE-backed" than the current mechanism and take away the need for the proposal and posts if enough people staked there for passive daily return to increase the flow of HBD? It could also be that the additional "lost curation" percentage for this automatically goes into a HBD-stabilizer mechanism to empower it further - or just remains in the pool for content distribution.

This would also mean that this kind of passive ROI seeking stake won't affect content curation activities, while still having influence on the rewards pool.