So what does anyone gain by having lots of teeny tiny blocks to stake? Besides keeping the couple of minutes it would take to combine them in order to spend those two minutes doing something far more valuable than aiming for 40% interest per month.
How long can blocks continue to gain weight before there is no more chance of higher stake?
I can only assume it's technically daunting for some to learn and use coin control. It's just easier to let them stake. I hope in the future we can build a wallet that's more user friendly.
According to the code, blocks will gain weight for up to 90 days. From there, the block keeps competing for stake with that weight. That's not to say your stake reward won't keep accumulating. Maybe someone else can verify this.
You don't even need to use coin control to consolidate blocks... Just send however-many coins to yourself and they're put into a new block anyway... There's nothing easier to do!
The stake doesn't keep accumulating post 90 days. I thought I was on the correct version of the Mac wallet after the fork last year, when I wasn't. So I was happily staking with my incorrect wallet, right up until March or something. I lost about 20,000 coins because the coins on the new (post-fork) blockchain had last staked more than 90 days previously...