There has been talk of returning to a 50/50 curation/payout split with some of the biggest accounts like 
Edit: adding a post and discussion from Blocktrades. The comments are very interesting to read.
My father was a fairly well-known artist, an acrylic on canvas painter who was able to get sponsorship to emigrate from Malaysia to Australia during white-only policy times in the 60s. No easy feat. Once there, he had to get a real job. Being an artist, even an accomplished one, just didn't pay the bills and the return of hundreds of hours of painting work per piece was much less than the steady income from employment.
I loved the show Californication and the character of Hank Moody, the witty, ladies-man who each episode would find himself in another messed up situation, generally in the arms of a beautiful woman at the bottom of a whiskey bottle. Ah, the romantic life of a professional writer. Fat advances and glamour. Sometimes.
Last night I was researching a little bit on the earnings of a writer (yes, occasionally I do research) and was surprised to find even my low expectations were not low enough. From the article I will take a quote but I do recommend that you read it all for detail.
So let’s do some quick math here: Let’s say you get a $5,000 advance for your book and you get 10% royalties net profit, and the book’s list price is $25.00. That means you are making $1.25 per book, and that you will need to sell 4,000 copies of your book just to break even. Thus the averages say that you will never make a penny from royalties off sales of your book (earn out). The average US non-fiction book sells about 250 copies a year and around 3,000 copies over its lifetime.
Now, this is for professionals who have enough trust that the publisher will offer any advance at all. An advance is just that, a loan that must be paid back. Typically, the publisher will be getting profits from 50 percent of the list price but they must do the work of editing, binding, marketing and distribution. It is no wonder they push electronic versions. Once one factors in the time commitment, being an author is not necessarily all it is cracked up to be and there aren't many JK Rowlings or George R. R. Martin's in the pack.
I am glad that it is not this way at Steemit.
We may feel that it is unfair that someone profits from our blood, sweat and tears, our hopes and dreams and our creations that pour forth from the heart, but the relationship is symbiotic, it is a partnership. We create, they invest. We earn something which attracts more creators, they make something which attracts more investors.
Actually, they need not vote on quality content at all for a return, they could just vote on random spam and get the same or self-vote their cut-and-paste comment 'Greed' over and over yet, they do not. Why? They are investors. They realise that if the creator/investor relationship is unbalanced, the health of the platform will decline to a point it is untenable. Getting this balance right is an ongoing negotiation and will shift many times in the future.
A 50/50 split may not be it but a 25/75 split is not working either as it encourages vote selling (read the interesting post by 
How I see the split of 50/50 is one of quiet optimism because I have the (potentially deluded) idea that if this happens, there is actually more reason for curators to find decent content as it 'really' does support the platform. I am not proud, I do not gloat but, I work my keister off and do all I can to develop various streams of content that I think will add value to the platform and the community within.
My hope is that with a 50/50 split, the paid voting bots will disappear or evolve, the spam can be heavily flagged and some of the voting behaviours change to leave more in the pool for quality content. Does my content qualify, I do not know but I know there is a lot of content that doesn't. I cannot sing, yet I can still hear when someone else can't hold a note. And this brings us to the fear.
The reason I support more return for curators is that I understand that without them my work is for me alone, there is no fiscal value. But, I don't fear this as I stand behind my work and at the bottom of each piece, I put my name. Here it is, my work for electronic eternity on the blockchain. I am not Tolkien, but if in a hundred years someone chances upon the Steemit archives, will they find me and say, 'Here's another shitposter doing it for rewards' ? I don't think so.
The fear others have is 'What if my work isn't good enough?' A very real fear is it not? Worrying about whether what comes from within is going to be accepted by the audience, applauded, condemned or criticised. Who are you creating for again? If you are doing it for yourself, you have nothing to fear, if you are doing it for the money, you better bring your A-game, if you want a blend of both, you better work hard for it, honey.
So, I trust that those big and small investors with voting power will support me because I do what I can to support them. I see massive potential for the Steem blockchain and therefore the value of Steem which means, the more creators and investors support each other, the more future value for everyone. If greed overweighs on either side, the platform topples.
Steemit is still in its infancy and all of the suggestions, discussions and actions are relatively easy to have, implement and change if harmful to the platform, not just for some actors within. The actors must evolve and help it grow, which means understanding the ecosystem, not just their little corner of it. This goes for creator and investor alike. I am lacking in many necessary areas, but I am learning.
The balance is not yet found but the willingness to keep searching is.
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]