Yes, you are right that there needs to be a middle class that does the bulk of the volume of transactions.
You are also right that currently there are very very few active accounts that have much interaction value.
But giving handouts is the wrong way to go. That’s just asking for power downs and cash outs.
People need to buy and in and build their value. It currently takes 4300 SP to create 1 STU in a vote. You can do 10 votes per day and recover all your voting power by the next day. That works out to 9.1 times your maximum vote. So with 4300 SP, worth about 12-13k USD right now, you can create 9.1 STUs per day or about 15-20 USD. Per day.
For someone who is interested in curating and only gets 25% of that it works out to a yield of about 20% without compounding. Show me anywhere else you can get that for clicking a few buttons.
Throw in a coupe self votes here and there and you’re off to the races.
But for whatever reason people aren’t buying in and powering up. They are trading on exchanges like every other crypto because they are trying to catch the next m00n.
The handouts aren't quite that if you mean the delegations to community builders. It wouldn't be random, no-track record.
This is what had people powering up (and buying in) before but with the bidbots, many feel that all they need to get a return is a few SBD, no need to power up...
They don't get what makes Steem important.