So in essence, what you have described is that it's "pay to play". And as a basic premise, that's quite common and totally acceptable.

Except that's not what we advertise this to be in the first place. When I returned I was able to make my post and even reply to some early comments because I had some dust in my wallet from earlier times, about $11 usd worth across the various types of wallet coinage combined. But by the time I had responded to just a couple of comments on my post I was stuck for 24 hours, until a friend saw me mention that off platform and sent me a small delegation to resume my replies.

Later that night I told another contact I had come back and they decided to revisit their old account as well, but it had an empty wallet and they could not even make a greeting post at all.

If that's the experience for the completely uninitiated, well, can you imagine, after all the other onboard complexity, why we might not have widespread adoption and growth?

If we were very clear up front, that participation even at the most fundamental levels comes at a price, well fine, but we don't have a sign on the door for that at all. It's confusing and nonsensical to people who come from every other social media platform in the world covering their free and unlimited activity with the advertising price on their heads. Not saying that's better, but why would I blog here when I can freely publish 100000 other places? And if it's only about getting paid to blog, why should I pay to be paid?

Before you start explaining, I certainly understand the differences and even the reasons we are different, but the limits are so frustrating and to some degree unnecessary, that its clearly part of the reason we have retention issues and engagement issues and growth issues.

Even the pay to play systems, have a free to play mode. You just don't get all the benefits or rewards. There has to be a better way. What it is? If I knew for sure, I'd probably build it and get rich. But certainly we didn't have this issue in the earliest days before RC, you would need a delegation to have a useful vote or your own money, but we didn't stop you from helping build the content or participating in general. That's a problem, Houston.