Receiving votes as a lowly plankton certainly encourages more sharing and participation. Your voting system sounds like a good way to spread the love.

One thing I've noticed that I'll point out - and it has more to do with minnows than dolphins/whales - there seems to be a lot of minnows who join curation trails, and vote with under 5% of their voting power. While it's awesome to see a bunch of upvotes coming in for a post, it really doesn't add anything to the post payout. Not only is that perhaps disappointing for the content creator, but that also means that the voter receives next to nothing from the curation, right? So I wonder if that practice is a bit self-defeating. Any thoughts on best-practices for minnows?