In general I do not understand the reward for curators. Curators should help us all find the good content. But clearly that system is not working at all on steemit due to the algorithms being exploited by bidbots. Instead of looking at $upvotes it is already much better looking at #upvotes. But #upvotes is not what is payed out in curation rewards.
Also the weird way curation rewards are paid, are excluding 90% of the users from getting any rewards at all. The reward structure introduces technical voting and much more.
Upvoting content works on almost all platforms without any monetary reward for the curators as you mention in the post. I would strongly consider setting curation rewards to 0% and 100% for the author.
Low curation rewards are the reason for the rise of bid bots. You make more money by selling your votes than you do by curating.
The problem is too low curation rewards.
Steemit caters to content creators far too much as it is.