Do minnows have a net positive impact on the platform? In an attention economy? Yes. In a hedge fund/investor economy? Not so much.

My line of thought was always that this thing, according to the "promises" we've heard for years was that it was FOR the minnows, by the minnows and about the minnows. Baby's first crypto and whatnot. That was always the party line premise from the beginning that brought the critical mass we used to have here, to here. Build things for the world, Everybody can benefit!

Then it became a place where that could be exploited, and whales made bidbots and spam farms ad all that to game the rewards pool. Then that got thwarted via forks. Now they are much more sophisticated bringing things like "value plans" and copy cat games that mimic those working well for their creator's pockets on other much, much larger chains like Eth.

So now you are honing in on my earlier comment. Are we supposed to act more like Youtube for creators, and audiences (curators) or are we just a ledger chain to keep track of the arcade owner's quarters?

We are currently both, and can be both, but the marketing spin, as you are surmising, is very very different and we need to set proper expectations at the front door. The problem is getting people to agree which is "better", "righter" or more useful in the world of competing alt-coin chains.

And to your question. I ask this. Are we helping minnows at all? Whether we should or not, that was the promise most of them came for back in the day, and in geographic regions like Venezuela, it took a foothold and makes a difference for them. They got helped! But in other areas, the attrition is high, because it didn't make enough difference for them to make the effort worth it to keep trying.

It is complex, but we made it that way. All of my conversations revolve around how to unfuck it, and depending on if I am talking to a struggling minnow or a nice fat whale, i get varying answers ranging from "its pointless to try to get ahead here" to "there's absolutely nothing wrong at all, you whiner" and all points in between.

I'm still, myself, trying to find the final boss of methods to describe my own feelings about it, but what I do know about my feelings is that ... somethin' ain't right and it could be so much better. And something we had here once is missing now. Something magical feeling.

But I can't articulate exactly what, and I'm super frustrated about that shortcoming or short sightedness on my own behalf.