I worry that the tools I help build are not used very much and that the hours invested go to waste.
True. It may not make sense right away for someone to give out a portion of their rewards to their commenters, but I feel like it will become useful, especially for posters who are looking for more feedback on their content.
I'm definitely going to use it and will also assist in promoting it. Hopefully, it will turn out well.
Most people want engagement and many don't even care about the rewards much, they use hive cause it's easier to be seen here compared to the big socials. Most of those people would also like to reward the commenters but since price is low and not everyone has that much HP to get comments past the minimum threshold they can instead forfeit part of their post rewards, curators can then maybe give them a slightly bigger vote instead, etc. People shouldn't see it as a way to "lose rewards" when giving a small % of post rewards to commenters, majority of voting power is used on posts anyway.
This is what got me interested in Ecency, Pizza, Pimp, and other second layer tokens. I love rewarding good comments, even if it's just a small thing, barely monetary. It lets people know their interaction is appreciated