You make some interesting points. My only addition here would be about truth in labeling. "Trending" is misleading. Most items in the Trending feed are promoted content. "Trending" (at least to me) suggests the sitewide most used tags (for example), not individual posts.

Maybe there should be a Most Valuable posts feed, and a Trending feed. Or maybe the Trending feed should be the posts with the greatest number of upvotes, not the most rewards. Although that could be gamed, too.

=^..^=