Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. These discussions help to make Steem a more vibrant blockchain.

Each of these projects has its own focus, making them largely complementary to one another. But we really don't wan't them all doing the same thing either.

Curie does an amazing job of bring recognition to authors that are not getting noticed. They especially try to find newer authors that are producing content that should rise to the top. As the platform grows, this becomes increasingly difficult, meaning that it becomes more needed. RobinhoodWhale steps up to the plate in this regard, helping in a similar fashion, but with slightly different internal dynamics and focus. MinnowsUnite and SteemSquad were designed for the same purpose, again with different internal dynamics and methodology.

SteemTrail does not try to reinvent this wheel at all. The focus is on content, regardless of payout. This makes us different - not better and not worse, just different. While sometimes we will vote on a new author's work if it isn't quite as good as we'd like, in order to encourage, our focus will continue to be to seek out the best content. We're more akin to Steem Guild in this regard, though we work differently internally.

With our trail, we can currently only upvote about 40 articles a day without diminishing the trail's voting power significantly. In spite of the fact that our trail is the third largest, without counting other trails that follow, we don't have the whale-power that would allow us to reduce each vote power and still have a decent impact if we vote more often. It's a balancing act that we must maintain in order to respect the voting power of our followers. Even at this rate, some have opted to reduce how much voting power they convey to the SteemTrail operator.

Currently there are about a half-dozen or so active teams focusing on specific topics. And we offer TRAIL coins as participation rewards, where Steem isn't designed to. Again, this isn't better or worse. It's complementary and we're convinced that it helps the community as a whole.

We welcome more participants to come help and improve the work being done. We'll continue doing the best we can to promote outstanding content on the Steem blockchain, and rewarding those who participate in seeking it out. If you would like to ask questions or become more involved, come to our Discord server and join us. We have a hangout there each day at 6pm Central to answer questions as well.