Hey Maxabit,

You make some good points. You're definitely right that a lot of minnows are able to get early support from upvote bots whereas they may otherwise give up, or struggle. I'd argue that some of these users are actually shooting themselves in the foot though - the Curie project, for example, offers HUGE upvotes ($100+ at current rates) to minnows with great content - but people who use upvote services are generally not eligible for this support.

For me, curie was the most important part of my early steem career. If I'd used upvote bots, I would not have ever gotten curated by them.

You mention that you'd like to see the "top 100 posts per day" curated by professionals - Curie basically does that, except it's more like 10 per day, and get them onto the top trending pages for their categories.

Here's an example of a recent curie-supported post: https://steemit.com/music/@dimitrij/seine-concert-in-slovenia-third-tour-belgium-and-france

So - if you see what I mean, users actually do have access to what you are describing - but only if they do not use the upvote bots.

It's not a perfect system - but it may be worth it for you to consider an alternative view. Perhaps upvote bots, while they feel good in the short term, are actually circumventing the kind of quality curation that you hope to see on our platform.