Thanks for the reply! There's a lot to reply to, there, so I apologize in advance if I don't address every point.

Steem is not a charity any more than the US Dollar is a charity, but both can be used for charity and investment - which is what an endowment is.

What I describe here doesn't onboard anyone as feeders. It onboards them as investors. They don't start "feeding" - as you put it - for 10 years, and even then they continue to invest and leave their base investment untouched in perpetuity.

There is a case to be made that people who are already on the blockchain would benefit from donating to a charitable cause like this because it will help the blockchain by potentially on-boarding people - both investors and users. Students may have no money, but they eventually become working professionals, so there is long-term value from on-boarding (and retaining) them.

But that's not what I was describing here. I was imagining here that a university endowment would use traditional fundraising mechanisms to buy into the blockchain at a rate of $2,500 per year for 10 years. And the endowment's account(s) would be owned by the university, not by a student.

From the blockchain perspective, you're absolutely right that it would be just another account trying to get more Steem. Which is why I described it as a "use case" in the title. But, as I point out in the article, universities have communications professionals and computer science departments and creative departments for fields like music, literature, and art, so they are very well positioned with the skills needed to go after rewards. I stayed away from implementation details, but the university would have to have some sort of mechanism in place for managing posting and voting authority for the endowment account(s).

On one hand, you're right that there is a lot of risk - as I acknowledged in the conclusion. On the other hand, though, much of that risk would be naturally mitigated through dollar-cost averaging. I think it's a matter of fiduciary responsibility for university endowments to have investments in their portfolio that run the gamut from high-risk/high-reward to highly-conservative. So, this would presumably be just a small part of their overall endowment funding, which is another form of risk mitigation.