Merit is the main obstacle for members to improve their rank. You need to make a lot of posts and threads in good quality to get enough Merit. For years doing that to rank up from Full Mem to Sr Mem or from Mem to Full Mem. So a lot of users don't have any choice but to stay with sign campaign, earning pitiful rewards with their rank.
Worse, the bear market also influences the price of bounties and airdrops to drop further even before they are rewarded to the participants.
If merit was like a problem for some user here then I am pretty sure that they are here for the wrong reason. If a user is here for the right reason, s/he would not mind anyway on how much merit s/he earns in any day.
It is just a like button in the end or upvote button if you're going to compare it to Reddit.
Kinda sad that some people are seeing this forum as an earning platform.