I'm on here only since a few months, and only very recentely realized that one can make money with signatures. (As a matter of fact, my signature does not make me any money, as that's not how that specific coin works. I use it out of conviction). Thus, until recently, I only regarded the ranks as a measure of board "seniority" and by implication as a measure of opinion influence.

TBH, I have not looked at how the revenue from signatures work, but I can see now that people simply want to increase rank to achieve a higher income, rather than because they are interested in the discussions and insights per se.

I presume (hope) there are others like me, who are less interested in the monetary rewards than in the intellectual rewards from participating. Thus, perhaps decoupling the rank and the merit system, and only use the merit system to have influence on the monetary benefits, maybe that would be cleaner in term of incentives? It would certainly work for me.