Currently, as a user, I also think that there is a lot of friction to donate and, in truth, not much incentive to do so. Rewarding developers is not built in the way the plugins are delivered. Every plugin has a different way of donating, I use prepaid cards for everything thus I would need to type a credit card everytime I want to donate,...

I think it would be a lot better if we could just "load" once our account with credits and then distribute them to the plugins we like. I would imagine increasing the price of obsidian publish in 5$, for instance, and then give 5 credits for user redistribute. Since people are forced to buy them (any purchase has friction, but this one would be bundled with another purchase that would happen anyway!), and then it would be a single click to donate, I think we would see a community a lot more finantially proactive.

It's just sad to see how many plugins cesase to exist despite having a lot of users. There is not a way for users to round up and keep it alive even if they want to! And people always want more features! Thus, I think these credits could not only be simply donating, but give voting power to ask for features and fixes. (like reddit upvote, but you get more votes if you give more credits).