It is not a matter of trust - as a witness, I think this is a really bad idea! As the site scales to millions (possibly billions) of users, I would have to spend my time each day reviewing every person on the site to see who is worthy of the list. Where would I find the time? I would probably need to hire a full-time staff! :)
[Edit] Also, how am I going to be able to tell who is 'good' vs. 'bad', 'real' vs. 'fake'?
I guess you are right it's difficult to do as people will create elaborated shill accounts. Even profil verification picture can be faked, and yeah it would take a lot of time too. Trustless guilds are by far the best solution to solve distribution issue. Do you know how would curation rewards be allocated in a guild?
I've created two posts with proposals, but it is very much up in the air right now.
This is a very simple proposal, although it does not get into actual 'guilds'. It would just be allowing whales to delegate their voting power to another user:
https://steemit.com/curation/@timcliff/human-vs-bot-curators-introducing-human-competition-into-the-equation-allow-whales-to-delegate-curation-power-to-dolphins-and
Here are thoughts on actual curation guilds:
https://steemit.com/curation-guilds/@timcliff/thoughts-for-curation-guilds