I'm not the type to accumulate smerit too long after I realize how useful this system is. On various occasion I have tried to distribute the existing smerit to those who deserve it. I'm excited to try distributing it on local board nowadays when I come across quality post because the distribution of merit there has been on a downturn over the last few months. Although I can distribute it on any board, but currently I try to focus on local while increasing the motivation of other users to post quality.
There are some criteria for someone to be in the DT1 network which also has one as being active in certain time period which also can be implemented to the merit source to avoid the source merit is getting wasted when someone went inactive for very long time period.
There is also the possibility that some are still active but their merit sharing will decrease so that there are still many quota that are not used every month. In my opinion, the merit source is not a robot, so it is still possible for them to reduce their activity a little more especially if they are not actively post. Maybe, the TMAN case was very different because he had been inactive for more than a year.