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

@dollarvigilante who came to steemit with a following. Similarly

@charlieshrem 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.

source

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 @dollarvigilante. However, I used steemdb.com to figure out who has the biggest followers following them. View the table below for the Top 25.

Account	Followers	Combined power of followers (GV)
@dantheman	2656	108.475 GV
@steemitblog	1188	78.941 GV
@krnel	959	73.864 GV
@roelandp	1237	73.809 GV
@charlieshrem	1834	71.868 GV
@furion	717	65.065 GV
@ned	2064	63.362 GV
@donkeypong	1376	61.327 GV
@dollarvigilante	3567	60.648 GV
@stellabelle	1680	58.825 GV
@good-karma	749	57.552 GV
@gavvet	1572	56.354 GV
@kevinwong	1414	55.712 GV
@sirwinchester	1372	55.056 GV
@ats-david	686	52.990 GV
@pfunk	1253	51.161 GV
@jesta	857	50.937 GV
@andrarchy	913	49.316 GV
@cryptoctopus	1145	49.003 GV
@steve-walschot	818	48.961 GV
@neilstrauss	654	48.553 GV
@anwenmeister	1155	48.552 GV
@thecryptofiend	1479	48.089 GV
@ausbitbank	815	48.018 GV
@tuck-fheman	924	47.312 GV
@faddat	356	46.429 GV
@dan	1287	45.217 GV

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

What if the curation rewards percentage for posts by the authors listed above were lower than the curation rewards percentage for posts by the "underdogs" or authors who are not being "followed" by whales?

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

@satoshi-nakamoto 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, @satoshi-nakamoto would have immediately gained a huge following of users that combine to make a large stakeholder. If the combined power of all of his followers were over 100 GV then the % of curation rewards for this authors next post could be as low as 5%.

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.