If I understand @smooth correctly, he is saying that there are already no significant curation awards for trending posts. The only problem is that people do not realize that. If correct, that means there is nothing to change, except better user notification.

I noticed that the "Potential payout" number that you get when you click on the payout amount below each post is NOT an estimate of what you are going to receive. It seems to be an estimate of what the poster might receive. Perhaps it would be better to replace this with (or add) an estimate of the amount you, as the curator, can expect to receive. I do not know enough to judge how feasible that is, but a rough, probabilistic estimate might still be better than nothing.