Currently, as you know many great articles are being thrown into the dust pile :(
Many bots are following proven authors, so the curation rewards are being stolen by bots because they get there first. Great articles are not being noticed by users with lots of influence. I thought about it for a while and here is a possible solution I came up with....
How about tying the reputation scores of users to the curation rewards. The lower the reputation score of the author, the higher curation reward. The curation reward will be paid in a sliding downward scale. First 10 upvoters will need to be presented a captcha to get rid of bots. Top 10 curators will get the lion share of the curation reward. Any post that has lots of upvotes will go into a queue for rich users (users who are the 10%'rs). If X number of rich users review the post in the queue and one of them upvotes it, then the article will start trending. If NONE of them upvote the article then all the curators will lose points in their curation score (new stat). The curation score will be tied into the curation payout in future post curations. The curation score will increase if they are consistently curation good content that the 10%'rs upvote for as well.
I think this system will generate lots of people looking for good content because there is lots of incentive, and makes it easier for the 10%'rs to filter through the garbage.