There have been a lot of discussion around the use of vote buying services on Steem and the negative effect this is having on the user experience. One look at the trending page and we can see the prominence of these services being used to boost some average content. Meanwhile, we have a Promote button embedded on each Steemit post that’s hardly being used.
A proposed solution
Why don’t we make it attractive for people to start using the Promote function on Steemit again?
With the negative impact of vote buying services on Steem, there have been a lot of discussion around how our whales could help to curtail the impact of these services, but then again, very few whales would be willing to use their Steempower for this purpose as it is unprofitable and attracts potential retaliation.
What if there was a curation service focused on curating quality content under the ‘Promoted’ tab?
The increased attention given to the Promoted content would make it more attractive for Steemians to use the Promote function to promote their posts, as well as incentivizing other curators to get in early on quality promoted posts.
In addition, with the rising price of Steem this year, we’ve seen a rapid growth in the supply of SBD on the market. In the long run, this isn’t sustainable, especially if the price of Steem takes off again. Therefore, by increasing the use of the Promote function, we are helping to reduce the supply of SBD, as SBD sent through the Promote function are burned. This is the only way I know of currently to burn SBD, besides converting SBD to Steem which no one will use as long as SBD is significantly above $1
Introducing 
The
At the moment this service isn’t yet active. But if I receive enough interest from the community with regards to this project, I’ll make it active and recruit others to the curation team and make this more of a community project.
Let me know what you think. If you have any suggestions, please reply in the comments below.