Definitely worth considering @smooth, I've been thinking lately perhaps the focus that's required is perhaps, back to seeding posts / accounts that work to perpetuate Steemit both internally and externally. But then again, I think that's the natural participation of most Steemians that will eventually lead into strengthening the currency over time. Maybe the focus should be about that..

Before the July period, the top daily curation lists took about an average of $50-60 per listed entry.

Now with Steem back at July prices, Curie's top daily curation lists are taking about an average $4-7 per listed entry. And this is used to support:-

• Finder’s fees for Curie curators and compensation for #curie channel moderators (mostly powered up, not much bleeding). There are seven of us here, actively covering 24/7.
• Development and running of all related tech & ops.
  To add, a decent level of DD, QC and collusion-avoidance with 2-3 layers of vouching for every suggested post, plus the #curie outlet - imo, it's a good mix of decentralisation and self-policing.

Moving forward, we are going to (and have been) implementing the following:-

• Cutting down on frequency of votes / account to avoid reinforcing certain content trends. Spreading more out to fresh / fringe accounts.
• Outreach for community building / ways to interact, build upon the Steemit ecosystem, and promote cross-skill collabs.
• Some accounts are objectively much better consistent content creators and great social blogs, and we're fast-tracking these into SG, to make way to support other potential accounts. Personally, I'd suggest Steemit's top influencers to look into the daily Curie to spot these accounts.. there's quite a number of these accounts, and they're usually quite eager to participate more in Steemit's community. For example: @samstonehill , @rubellitefae - great socialblogs found in the wild, imo.

I understand your concerns.. and it certainly did not escape all of us in the team as well, especially when the daily reward pool is shrinking. Organic curation at grassroots now is way too little for any meaningful curation, even when my vests are > 100M atm. (I could give out a cup of coffee / vote a few months ago, not now).

Personally, I think the overall ops will retain and build a database of close-knit, diversified set of creators. At one point, I think Steemit will have an on-demand gig layer that could provide services to non-Steem related entities, which will drive Steem's value moving forward. Imo, Steemit could be a very valuable database, with everyone in it essentially acting like a HR apparatus.. and I think this will have an edge over stuff like freelancer, fiverr, etc, and could be positioned in many various ways. Still working on that concept to present.. (this is a conjecture, of course, but what's not conjecture is the internal trading that's going to happen through store functions, and the database needs to be pre-populated).

Thanks @smooth, I think it's healthy to continue the discussion. No doubt I'm biased, seeing that I've been with the team since day 1. But we're definitely doing what we can to keep it relevant while working on community feedback, plus adjusting cost dependencies on the ops scaling with the value of the currency.

In a way, I guess a curation group like Curie is all about mass user attention / distribution, a way out of many other approaches to improve the network. What are your thoughts on what should be focused on?