I agree with you that it's complicated and has the potential to divide the user base. Maybe the goals of this idea could be addressed in some other way.

The main goal here is to define different reward rules for different types of posts, rather than one-size-fits-all. Other goals:

• A post that is time sensitive, like news, should not have a 30-day payout.
• Other languages could have the opportunity to have their own voting pool on the same blockchain (rather than fork their own blockchain).
• For long-form posts or fiction, some authors might not mind extending their initial payout out to 30 days or longer.

Because they are separate reward pools, it seems like it would be difficult to get consensus to make these reward pools pay in STEEM. It seems like it's easier to just create new tokens with their own pools. Since graphene supports User Issued Assets, it seems like a natural fit.

And since they are their own tokens, they'd need an internal market to set their value. Anyway, that's the progression.