Is the rewards leaderboard disproportionally weighted to the top end.?

If you are capable of hitting top 3, either with new users boost of vertical video spamming, or spam hitting recycled content or thirst trap content, or even genuine content, in any way, it's more appealing than  releasing continued, well thought out, written content, that lands you at anything lower than the $30 tier. 

It all depends on what content is getting pushed to the top but you've had to hit the $30 tier twenty times to get what the top three users get once. 

I think the curve needs to be flattened.

There is nothing more powerful in this world than words.

I agree if you see it from a motivational point for smaller accounts, but I think they are also a marketing tool to get other users on here.

One account getting a huge sum sells a lot easier than many accounts being constantly rewarded.

Sure but i think if one of those new accounts gets top three and then drops out they'll think there's no point in hanging around if it'll take 20-30 more weeks of grinding to get what they've just achieved in 1.