To be honest with you, when you're making a contest and its  viable one, people will rush to applying to it, why you may experience dryness on such thread might be because of the way people see it as unattractive to them and they are not being convinced on the whole thing you're giving them as reward, no one want to renders a wasted efforts and you should also know that mbtc has no value and they want something that they could hold unto, you're also spamming the thread as well, if none replies doesn't mean you should be posting continues, you can only bump the thread and that's all.