Earning small amounts of usdc can enable new behavior. It's usually not enough to make a living but gives signal to continue creating
Personal anecdotes:
- warpcast rewards, tipn (encourages casting more)
- farguesser mints (encourages more game development)
- ponder (encourages playing more "games")
- tip tuesday (encourages more authentic 1 on 1 conversations)
Earning tokens is interesting too but I think usdc micropayments are the precursor to that for most people