That alone is discouraging many minnows who have valuable content from posting it here in steemit.
Also the most annoying situation is when you post a good content a dolphin reads it, comments then he upvote his/her comment and who not even upvote you that made the post.@bit.curious I think steemit as become a platform where you have to belong to a community or know certain whale to make a reasonable payout from your very valuable content.
So steemit can be very hard for a minnow to get noticed. And the fact is the more u get noticed the more people benefits from your works.