Curie doesn't seem very selfless. That doesn't mean I don't think it is useful, it just is paying its workers quite a lot.

Curie pays its contributors 100% of all revenues. Contributors are paid a lot precisely because Curie is selfless :) Other projects are businesses, they have founders and owners that need to make a profit, hence retain a cut and don't pay contributors as much.

Curie is a community project operated entirely by the community. Anyone can get into the project (in the past it used to be completely opened, but now requires recommendations for existing curators as that was unsustainable) and through quality curation make their way up the ranks to the ultimate goal of getting a direct follow from Curie, and a reviewer's privilege. It's all transparent, fleshed out and objective. E.g. Each post accepted earns 20 Steem. To gain a lucrative reviewer or direct follow, you need to maintain a Curation Score of 200 over 6 months. Some contributors earn a lot, because they do all that work. Anyone can replace these contributors and earn that much by doing a better job. This system has developed some of the best curators on Steem, and may continue to do so. It empowers the highest quality curators.

The project runs through community contributions. The top curators decide how it functions democratically, and it has been a unanimous decision to note vote for other witnesses, to be completely apolitical and unbiased. Some curators have suggested that we would get a lot more witness votes had we traded votes etc, but we still didn't. That should give you a sense for Curie's spirit. Absolutely driven towards meritocratic and quality curation, for the benefit of promising authors and the Steem community in general, with absolute integrity and no compromises whatsoever.

Of course, Curie can go down a different path if our community so desires, but as of now, this project has survived for fifteen months never asking a single penny or a vote follow or anything at all, from the community. It runs entirely through donations, curation (mostly), author and witness rewards.

PS: Any questions, feel free to join the #curie channel on Steemit.chat. Someone will be around to answer your questions.