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Personally, I think using the reward pool to fund project is silly. If that project cannot be profitable with a stream of revenue, or subsidized through some entity's pocket, I feel it probably shouldn't exist.

I came to that conclusion a really long time ago. That's why we have monthly Steem subscriptions. The blockchain is all about an exchange of value. Say you created a really nice post, I can give some value to you through an upvote. But say I host content on servers for you, that may be worth actually investing USD to buy steem to pay me correct?