Many would agree the main challenge for the Steem community right now is how to fairly reward content creators in a way that is best for the growth and engagement of the protocol.

https://steemimg.com/images/2016/09/08/giphyb9f45.gif

Fairly rewarding creators is dependent on optimally distributing curation power. On Steem right now the fundamental problem is curation power is not optimally distributed.  I wanted to take some time to address the origin of the problem and suggest a few potential solutions.

# The founders, early miners and investors of Steem control curation  power and most either don’t want the power or are not skilled at curating

@ned, @dan, @jamesc, @ben, @berniesanders, @smooth, @val-a, and @tombstone and a few others have the vast majority of curating power on Steem as a result of being involved early in the project and owning a lot of Steem power. This has become a big problem because some of these people do not want to have this power (@jamesc, @ben, and @mottler are not even active curators) and others are not good at it (preventing growth because they don’t attract the best content creators and surface the best content to the community). 

There are exceptions that take their curations power very seriously and do a great job (@smooth being the best example IMO) but I generally don’t believe curation power was thought through thoroughly when Steem was created. Optimally allocating curation power will be improved in the future, either in a new network like Synereo (which is being more thoughtful about curation powers at the start) or via a natural redistribution on Steem. 

# Will the origins of curation power fatally doom Steem?

I don't think this will be the fatal flaw of Steem. It's very possible that curation powers get redistributed naturally and through community initiatives.

It may happen naturally as whales that don't want to curate power down and others that value and are good at curating buy up Steem power.

It may also happen through the community as initiatives like the [Robinhood Whale](https://steemit.com/steem/@repholder/the-robinhood-whale-initiave-community-feedback-needed) and @curie emerge to get curation power in the hands of people that both want to curate and are good at it. 

 # I hope that others will continue to think about how to optimally distribute curation power. It needs to be done for a decentralized social network to go mainstream and while we've got the best shot for now, that window may be closing!

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