Curator of the month nomination for April, 2026: Thoth

Back in January, @justinsunsteemit posted this:

I have no idea what he had in mind, and we haven't heard much else on the topic, so I guess his plans didn't work out.

Coincidentally, however, he was right. Without much fanfare, a groundbreaking AI did emerge on the Steem blockchain a couple of months later. As you probably know, Thoth arrived in March.

What makes Thoth groundbreaking? It has the potential to mitigate two of the biggest long-term challenges that have faced the Steem blockchain for years:

1. Vacuous daily posting has been required for investors to maximize their ROI; and
2. High quality posts stop generating rewards after just 7 days.

The way that Thoth works is that it searches the blockchain (past and present) for posts with lasting value, and when it finds them it posts a blog post and set of replies with an AI summary and beneficiary rewards set for the authors. This action is all supported by delegators, who also receive beneficiary rewards.

So now, if a Thoth account is backed by a sufficient stake, it should be possible for many delegators to earn higher ROI without posting than with daily spam posts, and the ability for authors to receive #lifetime-rewards from the blockchain has already been proven. The @thoth.test account has been making use of this capability since March.

Note that the ability to deliver rewards for already paid out posts through the use of beneficiary settings comes from the blockchain, not Thoth. One could argue that it depends on someone to create the posts and set the beneficiaries, but is that any different from authors who depend on voter action for their rewards during the first 7 days? Steem has had this ability for years, but it seems that nobody paid enough attention to it until AI came along.

The piece that I'm still missing is the ability to demonstrate the ROI advantage at scale (although, as proof-of-concept, Thoth's smaller delegators have observed very good return percentages). To demonstrate the ROI, I would need a much larger wallet - which is not going to happen any time soon. But, maybe it can be done if Steemit selects Thoth to be a curator of the month.

Accordingly, I propose that Steemit consider Thoth as a curator of the month next spring in order to showcase this groundbreaking AI and the blockchain's ability to deliver #lifetime-rewards. Why in the spring? Between now and April, I'd be willing to assist the Steemit engineering team (on nights and/or weekends) in order to help them learn how to set up an account and operational environment and fix any issues that are encountered. Presumably, Steemit would also need to work through the branding considerations for their Thoth account.

To date, the project has taken about six months, so I guess another six months should be plenty of time to get it ready for Steemit's use.

Recapping from this post, here are the advantages that Thoth brings to the table.

☑️Decentralized: Anyone can operate it
☑️Open Source (MIT License)
☑️LLM functionality can be accessed for free using models from ArliAI or Google Gemini (among others, probably).
☑️Delivers fully passive rewards to delegator-investors - no need for daily posting.
☑️Delivers rewards to authors, based on post selection criteria that each Thoth operator can tune to their own preferences.
☑️ Delivers rewards to the Thoth operator's account
☑️ Delivers additional rewards for attractive content among the >99% of posts that have already paid out (#lifetime-rewards)
☑️ Helps curators find and reward content with lasting value.
☑️ Aligns authors, curators, and investor incentives towards support of posts with lasting value.
☑️ Provides a vehicle for curators to support reward-burning
☑️ Each Thoth operator can customize reward distributions, allocating all, none, or some rewards to each of the following.

• Thoth account
• @null for burning
• Delegators
• Authors of curated posts

☑️ Optimize the voting with just 2 posts per day, and 5 replies to each post - all created to be SEO friendly.

Add to that another feature that I didn't anticipate, but have really come to appreciate with the @thoth.test account:

☑️ Single-language summaries of posts in multiple, diverse origin languages.

Also (update):
☑️ Thoth complies with these proposed netiquette rules for automatons

Personally, if Thoth is selected, I don't want any share of the rewards from the effort. I just want to see the Steem blockchain reclaim its position at the forefront of innovation in blockchain-based social media. The project is Open Source, so Steemit (or anyone) is free to use it.

AI is a reality, and I'm convinced that fighting it is a losing battle. Instead, we need to learn how to cultivate it in ways that enhance the ecosystem for humans. I think that's what Thoth does. You can take a look at the posts that the @thoth.test account is finding and see if you agree.

Dear @steemitblog, @steemcurator01, and/or @steemcurator02, what do you think? Can Thoth join you on the Steemit team in April?

Thank you for your attention!

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