I think this proposal should be dropped and favor Dee’s (with a good justification of what the validator payments should actually be).
Fundamentally, I disagree that validators (or anyone FWIW) should get rewarded retroactively. They signed up for a protocol and the protocol responded as designed. If they they weren’t happy with the parameters they should have got involved earlier or stop doing it.
Secondly, I find it very unfair that it’s up to a group of humans to decide who should get the payment and who shouldn’t. To me, it should just be proporcional to their uptime, maybe rewarding more the ones that stayed online while there were empty slots. Anything unrelated to actual validating blocks should not be considered.
But I think this payment shouldn’t happen at all, that’s the reason we have a protocol. I also feel very strongly against tightening this to soft promises, when validator rewards were from a very beginning paid on past work. If someone wants to work on a project, then they should ask for a grant as everyone else would.
Disclaimer: I run a validator myself, so does my employer. I’m speaking on personal behalf.