Most of your assumptions are right. Except one.
May main problem clearly was NOT "the lack of trust"
The problem was that I nmoticed (discovered) the "VYB launch post" way to late.

Thanks for the clarification.

You are without question a very prudent investor who methodically exercises due diligence. With that said, feel free to provide suggestions on ways to make VYB more investor-friendly.

You are a solid investor who is staunchly committed to manual curation -- that is a characteristic that is highly valuable to the community, yet quite rare. Most large investors simply rely on auto-voting to maintain their stake in the inflation pool (a practice that is totally understandable, but muddies the manual curation waters, as I have discussed here and here).

I have briefly mentioned elsewhere that I am working on a protocol to enable outside investors to purchase and stake VYB without having to worry about curating, but without corrupting or reducing the curation rewards pool or the author rewards pool. I (personally) view such a thing as a win-win, because it should increase the value of the token (via increased demand) without diminishing the rewards of manual curators or content creators.

I am interested in your thoughts on this concept.