When I joined Steem in July 2016, there were just a handful of whales who were supporting a handful of authors, and that was the end of that. If you were a newbie who didn't personally know a whale, you were basically shit out of luck.
There were definitely a couple of whales that tried to kickstart curation initiatives, and some projects that were built around the idea of creating a community whale account. But none of these concepts really materialized for various reasons.
In August 2016, a wonderful ex-Steemian (not me, but you all could guess who I'm talking about) came up with a wonderful idea. Some benevolent whales wanted to see better curation on Steem, but didn't have the time or expertise to make it happen. On the other hand, there were a few skilled curators on Steem who didn't have the SP to make a difference. How about connecting the two? Delegate the whales' SP to the skilled curators.
I was one of the initial curators, but there were others. We had one simple goal - to jumpstart curation on Steem, so it was no longer just a few whales and authors. We wanted to see a healthy ecosystem where good content creators were rewarded and retained on the platform. For about 3 weeks, we worked quietly behind the scenes. It was a wild success - new and talented Steemians were getting rewarded, engaged and retained on the platform. This classic post gave us empirical evidence that we were on the right track. A public announcement was made announcing Project Curie in early September 2016, along with opening up curation to everyone. Anyone could submit a post! At this time, it was still a temporary, experimental project, but soon we saw a large demand from curators and creators alike. Unfortunately, the end of 2016 was really tough for Steem, with the price tanking and morale at an all-time low. Curie received a lot of backlash for its daily posts (in hindsight, no idea why), though as always, we abandoned that quickly enough in response to the community.
In February 2017, Curie made the bold move of transitioning to being a voluntary, community operated project. The project belonged to the community, and anyone could curate. This is about the time then pretty much all of the initial members realized that our goals had been achieved. I slowly started downscaling my activity both with Curie and on Steem. Today, we see a diverse range of curation initiatives, and almost all of them have members that had something or the other to do with Curie in the past. At the same time, let me be very clear that it absolutely wasn't enough. Steem needed a lot, lot more help which it never got. By early 2018, I was pretty much inactive, had no operational role with Curie; though I continued curating and reviewing off and on.
While I was away, Curie achieved a lot of things, driven by community members who came long after all of the initial members had moved on. In December 2019, after a gap of two years, I decided to blog on Steem for a couple of months. I suppose the main motivation was seeing it as a Star Wars-themed month. Steem remained as disappointing as ever, but I also chose to rejoin Curie. I don't have much of a role, but just helping people out wherever I can, especially with the transition to Community curation. I was delighted to see many good people still actively contributing to Curie and by extension, Steem. At the same time, I noticed many top curators had left, so Curie was definitely not the same as 2018 - though this is true for most of Steem. The Hive transition has me interested, so this time, I'm probably going to stick around for longer.
This transition is a big move for Curie, and allows Curie to reach a much larger audience in a more efficient manner. All those curators who have been trained extensively over the years can now go out and curate their favourite communities, or even create their own. While general activity on Hive and Steem remains very low, I've definitely seen very effective curation and engagement in some of these communities.
The transition from Steem to Hive really hurt Curie. Understandably, people wanted to power down from Steem, and as a result, cancelled all of Curie's delegations. Curie's community project nature also means it didn't have a strong voice through the crisis, and as a result never got the witness votes other individuals did. As a result, Curie lies in a precarious position with a 90+% reduction in revenues. We still have communities to build, creators to retain, curators to mentor. In 2017, I thought Curie's job was done, but today seeing where Hive is at, I think Curie has a new mandate.
Curie made a post requesting for support. I'm delighted to see the community response, many people have come together to delegate 10k+ HP, and I see a couple hundred new trailers on Hive.vote. While every HP helps, I'm calling on whales and large stakeholders to also support curation initiatives and curators on Steem. If you'd like to earn something from your delegation, Dlease has pretty attractive rates of nearly 10% APR. Remember, Curie gives back all earnings back to curators and the Hive community, but by pooling resources in a decentralized hub definitely makes things more efficient, and offers greater quality control. However, I'm equally grateful if you delegate to curators directly.
My Discord is open at @liberosist#8254, I'd love to have a chat with you.