While looking at STEEM's new rewards function - which is a bit scattered in the code - I noticed, how the turning points of the reward curve appear to be a function of recent_claims.
If that was the case, you could (maybe?) mildly exploit this; If you were to gather a lot of claimable rewards and all claim them at once (given that your claim is big enough) you could impact the recent_claims parameter, move the turning points and influence the actual payout of the trending section.
It would be at the cost of the income you could have had from the rewards, if you had claimed them instantly and it would affect the entire reward pool for everybody - on an individual scale, the authors probably would not even notice.
Is there a post that discusses the turning points or the new curve in depth ?
Is there historic data for recent_claims, anyways ? This is not part of the blockchain API, I am sure.