I just want to remind people that although most people are into crypto for short term profits, this should not be what defines crypto. Otherwise no coins would ever go up in value. What determines value (even in short term), is the belief that a coin could become the future of commerce as we know it. Staking IS important and should never be taken out. Banks used to provide interest when you put money in the bank. I believe we should try to model this as best as possible. Some of the other features you mentioned, could be interesting on their own, but not as a replacement I feel.
1. Banks are failing, do we really wanna follow a model of something that is failing?
2. Banks take cash deposit, so they pay out interest with cash, reason being that cash is widely accepted as a stable form of value. If cash were just another crypto or an unestablished currency, we would have the same problems with cash as we would with bitcoin and cryptos when it comes to spending-value and buying power.
I'm not saying to take out the stake aspect, but we need a different reward on top of the stake or the idea will never stick. Providing only HAL stake when HAL does not have a widely established base of users and interest would not have any major impact of how people view the Peersend masternode system. As of now HAL is still a "value-less" currency, in the sense that at any moment this whole thing can come crashing down regardless of how hard the dev works or how many innovations we put in this thing, reason being because of the low mcap, small user base, etc. This is the problem with 99% of cryptos right now, especially those that are modeling their coin after a banking or savings system by adjusting the stake %. It's like if the dollar was noticeably unused or crashing in value, and to provide incentives for using it, we printed more and more money to give out. Same scenario here. Upping the stake %, and praying that investors and users hold for the long run makes the chances of success a coin flip. Bottom line is, yes belief in a coin should be what drives it, but in reality, this is just not what happens. Until we reach a self-sustainable level of acceptance from users, we'll need this non-HAL reward/incentive system to keep us growing.
It's much more efficient and can provide HAL much more interest and growth potential by providing non-stake incentives on top of the current reward system so that we are essentially hedging HAL value against other forms of value. Meaning, we have something to fall back on in case HAL were to crash or lose interest from people. These external rewards generate constant interest from communities outside HAL, and provide added forms of value that can give HAL a fighting chance to "make it" as a currency.
If HAL were to crash or lose interest, an extra 3% bonus would not "do anything" for interest or price. If there was a tangible reward (discount, coupon, merchandise, BTC payment, etc), then this reward would actually help keep HAL from crashing because the reward value is not tied to HAL's value. It's important to have a system that hedges value depreciation by offsetting the chances of depreciation with things that do not have as much a chance of depreciating.
Simply said, you can't back the value of a coin by throwing more coin at it, or hoping that people will recognize the non-tangible benefits, because most likely scenario is that they they won't.
Looking forward to the updates from dev and the Mintpal addition 