I disagree with the need to buy SteemPower because once you have built an audience as a blogger you don't need the SteemPower. If one wants to earn from Curation then SteemPower is super important. This is definitely a different form of Proof of Work and the difficulty will increase exponentially as better and better bloggers show up. So put in tons of work now everyone because in the future your blogging might not be good enough to compete.