I believe we'll be around in the future. It may be like the start of any crypto currency for awhile but really this place seems too addictive to be a failure at this point.
As to big payout posts. Most yes, but I had three @chaospoet (that's me too) comments do 3 figures each on the same blog entry as I managed to pull off a pretty deep dialog only using poetry. (luck) I think that entire blog post might have hit four figures barely and my @chaospoet stuff was a bunch of it. I sent the original author some SBD as thanks even though he didn't require it as he is one of those doing quite a bit better than you and I. That was my single greatest payout. I don't post with @chaospoet a lot though so as not to wear out his novelty. I do most of my work here on my personal account.