Lyn Alden has a better take.
https://primal.net/e/c96f7de9fba755d6e95d07b177ee8eaf72c1066576ac544f0845ee16072728db

Given the sudden drop and it not being reflected in other node trackers, probably their method of tracking onion nodes hit a snag.

Great piece! You hit on a bunch of cool ideas.

One thought I had that pulls a few of yours together, is that SN works for a bunch of interconnected reasons. One of them is what experimental economists call "warm glow": it feels nice to support someone who wrote something we liked.

The more interesting connection, to me, is that there might be a disparity between how we value sats going out vs sats coming in. Many of us are spend and replacers, so sats going out may be valued at roughly the current exchange rate. As Hodlers, however, we may be valuing the sats coming in at whatever purchasing power we imagine they'll attain.

As to the other micropayment ideas, I'm sure we'll see many different business models play around with different ways to implement and pitch micropayments. Some of them will improve the consumer experience and most won't. There will probably be micropayments in surprising places, as well as a lack of them in seemingly obvious ones.

Just make sure SN is sustainable long term.