Thank you very much for your comment @xplosive, and both the decreasing active userbase and the less number of comments per post is a problem, in my opinion it's not really about greed, but about the lack of utility of Steem outside of the blockchain, when you can't easily pay for things with Steem from one member to the next you take it out and pay for it and thereby you decrease it's value, and that is the main problem overall.
Then you also have the change with HF21/22 that also meant less rewards for comments, and that can of course be seen as greedy, but any system that does not force bad actors to work for the common good out of selfish reasons will have that problem, which is why I do like the discussion about removing Steem as a rewards token, and let the users be rewarded with Tribe tokens and SMT's instead, then just let Steem run the blockchain and be the main trading pair.
That way there is no central way but many smaller ways to reward creativity and engagement and the best ones will be the most successful.
As to increasing the utility for payments, the CTPtalk tribe just launched a complete payment solution that you can install on any website you want and accept payments directly to your Steem account without any middleman, it's up and running on more than half a dozen sites already and used for accepting payments, plus it can be used with any Steem-engine token, that way the tokens never leave circulation, you just use them to pay with and that retains value much more than selling them and then paying.
Then comes the question on how to create engagement, and if I take a look at your account you do have a lot of engagement, but not that high rewards, now I just took a quick glanse, but it seems to be a lot of polls through Dpoll, not sure why you focus on that, but if that is what you are passionate about then go for it.
What I would say though is that the questions is all over the place, no single subject and that is not good for consistency, if people come back to your profile they do so because they are interested in a certain subject, and if they can't find that then that means less engagement overall.
As to the rewards, I have no experience with polls, but my experience with making blog posts and with making videos is that there needs to be consistent quality and tied to a subject that you are passionate about, plus also consistent posting daily to get the results that you want when it comes to rewards and engagement.
You start with what you are passionate about and make posts about that, not the other way around of trying to figure out what people want then post about that, when you post about your passion and interests you will attract others that are interested in the same subject, and you should also reach out and find them, and thereby you have your engagement and the rewards will follow.
This is of course a lot easier if you are active in a certain tribe about that subject, which I am with CTPtalk, but the tribes are also the ones taking in the most new Steemians these days, and CTPtalk does also onboard quite a bit of new people from the outside, plus with this new payment system it's accelerating.
Thanks a lot for your comment and sharing your opinion, and by the way you also inspired me to make a video about creating engagement, it will be posted in and hour or two from now if the encoding works well, have an awesome weekend ahead.