The real issue is that not much curation is actually happening.

Minnows vote - but mostly because they want a reciprocal vote, it is a way of getting attention. They can't deliver any monetary value with their votes. The whales vote for about 20 authors all the time, and no-one else. And the growing dolphin class don't bother at all. They could deliver a few cents to writers, and it would add up if lots of them did it - but they feel they don't get much curation award from it, so why bother - they are better off spending all their time writing for the whale-bots.

Ideally you would have the dolphin class do a lot of curation just to ensure the health of the system - but maybe they think it will fail anyway, so why bother, focus on writing as much as possible and reaping the awards.