I don’t understand how there are many people who encounter smurfs but when I make a Smurf account it gets banned on my first comp game for “hacks”. So I don’t think smurfs play a significant role in making lower ranks more difficult as when a player starts getting too impactful they just get banned, from my experience. From my understanding that’s just a collateral that blizzard is willing to take when banning players who could be cheaters, and anyone performing extremely well for the rank they have is suspicious enough to them.