RE: Announcing the first student project of my class: Proof of Blind -- a way for unknown authors to get recognized & rewarded quickly

Here is how we envision new authors 'graduating' out of the program:

we will post periodic (e.g. weekly) statistics (via @blind.stats) showing which authors are posting to Proof of Blind and the rankings of cumulative and median rewards earned by each author. This can serve as a gateway for extremely talented authors to quickly establish a name for themselves. These periodic reports will also serve as a way for manual curators to easily expand the list of authors they choose to follow, thus enabling relatively unknown authors to readily connect with proactive manual curators.

In other words, we expect manual curators to regularly check the @blind.stats reports to see who is consistently receiving high votes (and 'follow' them). Also, I anticipate some manual curators will take the time to look at the beneficiary list whenever they find an exceptionally-well-written Proof of Blind post, so that they can directly follow that author.

Once an author starts gaining followers (especially once they get the attention of one or more 'whale' followers), they can start experimenting with posting some of their content under their own 'brand'. As soon as it becomes more beneficial for them to be publishing solely under their own account, then they will have graduated out of the program.

The real value of the business plan is providing the Curators with free plagiarism screening service. That is the USP that the Authors are paying for in the first place.

Is it desirable to skew the 50/50 Author/Curators split towards Curator group just because they innovated and split the job between two specialised positions (Plagirism Check and Quality Assessment)?

I do not think it is but I prefer to observe the competition between this project and the traditional model in spite of my feeling the Curator group is favoured over Author group in any free-market attempt to arrive at a fair reward split percentage.

I am not saying the proposed split is wrong. Charge the Curators even a tiny percentage and you create a huge business risk of the Curators graduating out when they have enough of a proven-Author list.

Remember, Curators are the ones bringing the money in. They are the customers. They are usually not money-oriented (quality content discovery pays no extra money) but you need to prioritise their needs over the needs of your contractors (ie Authors) whenever these two clash.

I feel the project is heavily misbranded. How hard is to keep the author undisclosed and send the rewards post-payout compared to adding them as benefactor? Is this something you would just happen to overlook if you are passionate about the blindfolded curation idea?