Hello nice post and enjoy the start of debate on the topic. I have to admit that my gut feel is that this will be good for the platform. As someone who enjoys viewing quality posts and pics, I spend a good deal of time curating. As such the increased curation rewards are certainly appealing.

I've heard some authors complain that the reduced payout proportion will negatively affect their income. I'm not sure that is the case. If there is higher value paid for curating, more people will vote on quality posts, and so while the proportion may be less, the amount will be more. Spam and low quality votes may not see as much manual voting so their payout will certainly be reduced. That is a good thing. Maybe those folks will leave, and be replace by new folks producing quality posts, and doing manual upvoting on quality posts.

The really good news is to see that the folks running the platform are still engaged and making changes in a desire to improve the platform. Most of the changes I've seen in the 2 years I've been on have been for the better. Maybe not all of them will be, but good to see the attempts and continued interest.

Enjoy!
@ksteem