You can read the Curie whitepaper to learn more (https://steemit.com/curation/@curie/curie-whitepaper) but in a nutshell it is a curation organization - Curie curators hunt down exceptional posts by authors who haven't received major reward lately for their posting, Curie reviewers (former Curie curators whose on-job performance rated highly enough to be promoted to reviewer) review the submissions and upvote if they agree. Some really large votes trail behind the @curie vote, typically we are talking between $90 - $200 pending payout after the Curie vote. Cheers - Carl