I suspect that their hope lies somewhere in the direction of what you mention earlier regarding payment for editors via boost nominations.

They would select perhaps ten or fifty times as many publications with nominator editors as at present, as outsourced gatekeepers of quality, rewarded through a flat fee, or more likely evolving towards a percentage of the earnings of each boosted story.

The best writers will be forced by the current earnings formula to gravitate towards those boosting pubs, which will then be ensconced on a higher tier than regular 'what-I-had-for-lunch blog' platforms.

So long as the pubs (either as such or in the person of individual editors) receive a constant stream of quality, boostable content, which almost automatically gets converted into a (fluctuating) revenue stream, that should work out OK for high-profile pubs, I would have thought.

But it remains very hit-and-miss for writers, as the same piece will see its earnings vary by a factor of ten depending on whether it does or does not get selected. A decision which is subject to basic mathematics -some kind of quota must apply, or we all end up earning three deciduous forests per article, which buys us precisely one ship's peanut- but also open to abuse, favouritism, or just bad luck as to the preferences of who was in the editor's chair the day you submitted your work.

Medium is already aware of these failings at this early stage of the boost programme. Scale the whole system up massively, and do they have the inhouse staff to police it?

I suspect it might prove easier, the way the tectonic plates are currently shifting, for Medium to satisfy publication owners' needs and desires, than writers'.