Note: Seeking curation rewards is not worth a minnows time.
Curation incentives can turn steemit into an interesting game for the dolphins and whales. The trick is to choose content that will get the most rShares (stake weighted votes) after your own vote. The higher the post rewards become after your own vote, the higher your curation reward will be. It's kinda like picking a horse in the bookies...
Except... It's not...
I once worked in a bookmakers where I sold bets on horses, dogs and football for 10 hours a day. It was a fun job and the punters were fun to be around. I noticed there were 2 kinds of gamblers: the ones who played euro after euro on horses at 100/1 odds, and the ones who played €50 on a horse at 2/1. The horse at 2/1 wins more often, but costs the gambler more if they lose the bet. The horse at 100/1 has lower risk of loss from the bet, since to win €100 you only need to bet €1 and so the punters really don't realise the gradual losses especially if they eventually get a win.
What's this got to do with steemit?
If you think of every steemit account or author like a racehorse, there are some accounts that have greater odds at winning the race than others. Some horses are just famous for their speed. Some are just becoming recognised and realised for their potential. Then you have the underdogs. An underdog is a competitor who has very little chance of winning. It is human nature to root for the underdog. We all hope and want to believe that if we put in the effort there is a chance we could succeed.
On steemit you have users like
who came to steemit with a following. Similarly 
instantly had a very good chance of "making it" here on steemit. So much so, he posted about feeling guilty about it. Normally greater rewards for the less likely winner incentivises people to bet on the underdog. Currently on steemit, there is very little incentive to vote for the underdog. The underdog could be highly skilled and highly appreciated by the minnows that read their content. But without the incentive to seek out this new guy - since the rewards of the already accomplished authors is more predictable - the underdog could spend a very long time building themselves up to gain recognition for the value they provide to the community. Most of us have to do that anyway, but it is that small chance of a large upvote that would not only give a high payout, but bring your post to the eyes of so many people - that is what keeps the underdog trying.
15 minutes of fame is all any good blogger needs to instantly gain recognition and a following.
According to SteemWhales.com the author on steemit with the most followers is
Currently 75% of a posts rewards goes to the author and 25% goes to the curator, no matter how high or low their chances of "winning" are.
I propose a change
For example, lets say a new user appears on the platform and has no followers at the time of their first post. The ratio of author rewards to curation rewards could be 50-50 since this author needs to gain some recognition on the platform. The curators who bring this new user to peoples attention get a higher % of the curation reward for doing so. Lets say this new user was the real
and they proved it in that first post (I know OMG #starstruck).
There's a high likelihood that after being brought to the attention of the whole community by the upvotes,
This drastically lowers the incentive to upvote this user based solely on the expectation that they will win since the % of the rewards would be lower. However, knowing just how popular this author is is still incentive enough for many users to upvote the content.
"Gaming" the system
I can see two counteracting ways that this system could be gamed.
- Whales could choose not to follow the authors they upvote to keep the curation % high
- Whales could choose to follow authors in order to decrease the incentives to upvote their content
Since a whale could intentionally lower the curation reward % an author this checks and balances the system so that stake has another power in determining what incentives there are to reward content. Since curators would prefer to keep the curation % higher, they are only likely to lower them if they believe they are seen too often on the trending page. This would never completely remove curation rewards, and if voters were unaffected by the decreased incentives the author would be very pleased to receive a higher % of author rewards. But there would be added incentive for curators to seek out new authors who are seeking recognition.
