$1.7 million is huge money indeed,...
That was the total value of the current Balance.
We don't know if the Balance was:
1. Total Current Donations
2. The Remaining Donations From The Past
3. A Figure with Mix Digits from Forum Advertising
And Looking back on 2017&2018 where theymos did bring as a small breakdown of expenses, I think $1.7M is not that really big especially if they have tons of expenses just to bring a healthy forum.
No mod is paid a wage per se (except for maybe Cyrus and co with his
Cryptios company but I don't know the terms of that deal). It all depends on how much 'work' you do, but it's capped at a certain amount. If you do nothing you'll get nothing. If you do a little you'll get a little. Last month almost 1btc was paid out between 26 mods ($9157). Three of those received nothing. 8 of those received less than $100 or just a little bit more.
The reason why we see some Mods getting their Signatures rented. 👆👆👆