IDK

But if we remember that at the heart of the matter, we're all miners, that we’re mining, or, better said, in this case, 'minting', 'staking', or what have you, but, essentially we are mining. It’s the distribution via a rewards pool that complicates things, but the root activity is mining. The newly created tokens have their inherent value, upon creation, just like any other thriving cryptocurrency. Those ‘mining’ rewards rightfully go to the miners, or the authors, curators, witnesses, etc. as is the case here. It’s real wealth being distributed in as an equitable way as we can.

Rather labor intensive in comparison … remember you have 20% of your voting power you MUST distribute daily in order to do your job correctly. It’s your duty. And you’re not giving away anything. You’re working together to equitably distribute the newly created tokens.

Obviously we’re not all here for the short term monetary returns though.

Not to mention all the real content creators who are tired of giving it away via traditional means. And, hey, why not give it a try. Who’d have said that they’d indirectly become crypto miners!

And the problem of lack of engagement is due to the reward system being skewed to the higher vote count posts. Comments are at the other end of the spectrum, with few votes, inferior prorated returns, and miners don’t like that – they tend to gravitate to higher returns, not lower.

You’ve got to align rewards with desired goals. You want more engagement, then you’ve got to reward it accordingly.

The points you make are solid arguments for shortening power down time though, but, again, bottom line is this is really a business and/or investment. Imagine the “power down” on BTC ASIC miners. Here you walk away with your entire fixed cost investment, if you decide to do so. Everything has its pluses and minuses.

But work it is: we’re distributing real wealth to the tune of 20% of our voting power on a daily basis, ‘giving away’ upvotes that count!