Most of them have been relatively stagnant...

It's a free market. They need to do or die. If their community isn't worth being in and can't grow, then the market is speaking and telling them that it's not good enough.

I also know that there are plenty of communities with no 2nd layer token and it would also require them to figure out how to construct their tokens.

Any interface like Peakd or Ecency can use the same rewards distribution protocols as we have right now on Hive. All they would need to do is create their own token(s) for it. I honestly don't know why they haven't done this yet. It would likely be more profitable for them to do that and reserve a portion for their team than to continue seeking pay from the DHF. And then they would have more freedom to do their own advertising and marketing with their tokens and to use them for promotion of content, as other interfaces have done or already do.