Interesting... It would seem that sMerit expenditures have stabilized, or are even increasing. I know that theymos added a few merit sources recently... probably won't add any more for a while now.
Total merit sources increased from 123 to 130 with
7 8more newly added merit sources (7 + 1 due to Vod's leave nearly the same time), but total allocated merits to merit sources only increased 160 merits (from 20735 to 20895). It means that each of 7 new merit sources received around 160/
78 ~
2320 merit per 30 days, that is not significant amount, in my opinion.
Maybe, theymos wanted to test effectiveness of new merit sources, before giving them more allocated merits, or it is theymos' intention to keep merit inflation at lows.
New merit sources do receive too many merits:
There are 130 merit sources with a total merit generation of up to 20895 sMerit per 30 days