I'll take this point about CURIE to say that it is essentially a Delegated Curation Guild.

The reason there are only one or two of these so far (Smooth and NGC) is this:

Whales that are not voting a lot may be doing so as a means of abstaining from rewards and giving minnows a chance to grow influence.

Whales that are voting a lot may be doing so as a means of projects like CURIE to give minnows a chance to grow influence.

Both parties are seeking the same goals of gamifying / growing the platform.

It just happens that the difference in means creates a strong cognitive dissonance between the two groups.

Delegated Curation Guilds (DCGs) are potentially a solution to the cognitive dissonance by allowing both types of whales to continue doing (abstaining from voting, voting actively, or “hiring” curators) what they were doing while bringing the available voting power into the market in either a profit seeking or altruistic manner.

Edited to add the this:*

Richard, no one meant any offense anywhere, including CURIE - If Val's response was emotional as trying to protect me then that's on me.

By describing the Curation Guild I was trying to make the case that curation can get better. Any whale of the same size can do the same thing nextgencrypto is doing, but instead most are not voting and using that as a community benefitting strategy. I hope you see that.

We can do better on community engagement for proposed changes. Let's do better. (We are hiring: https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemitjobs/new-steemit-job-posting-community-and-social-media-manager)

I appreciate Richard and the community for bringing all the time and work that you are