I think you have made a reasonably good assessment of the Steemit EIP. I think is important to emphasis that there are 3 parts to the strategy (curation, downvote pool, and rewards curve). These three are used to increase the incentive to curate.

I understand the downvote pool is most likely to face the most resistance. There are a few ways this can be implemented. Offering curation rewards for downvotes would be a bad approach. It is good that is not being proposed. A downvote pool that offers no reward but does not take from a users voting power is far more reasonable. As it stands, downvoting costs the downvoter almost as much as the downvotee (assumption of 1 lost selfvote). That should not be the case.