Thank you for the tag. This account has not been active for a while although the purpose behind it is needed more than ever.
You are in quite the quandry here. You admit flaws, fakeries and what not. You are honest, but are you? One point does bare repeating and that is in regards to the whales whom targeted you. Maybe you abused the pool, maybe you didn't.
Regardless your honesty is insightful to a truth and it's sad to see individuals create something special in a place that could be so much more, yet it falls to the same pitfalls of greed and malice as all other (market)places do.
Humanity is pitiful in this regard. Fight over scraps while the world whirls into a craven cannibalism of the weaker amongst them. This is the principle of M.A.D foisted upon us by superior classess: our Mutually Assured Destruction only begets more wealth and control to them, who look upon high up and shit upon us.