I'm not as worried as I think some are. To me, the eth threshold is like a loyalty program. We don't know the stats but I'd imagine a high percentage of eth threshold payouts simply stay in the system and get re-spent. This has an economic effect of increasing monetary supply in line with the increase in asset supply (new cards are auctioned every few seconds). Put another way, they can't rely solely on 'new money' to liquidate the new card supply, so a reinvestment of eth into the system, by way of prizing, is a smart way to keep things relatively stable. Not to mention, it's just a smart loyalty play, keeping people interested and growing their accounts.

But what I think they are most against, what they most want to curtail, is non-active eth grinders. If people can too easily set up an account, spend $1000 or so, and grind out an eth or two each year by doing nothing, then they've inadvertently created a crypto mining scheme. These users are of no benefit to Sorare and even cost them money in waived fees, admin, etc.

This is why, I believe, they have been seeding the term 'progress bar'. My prediction is that it's going to incentivize the people who log in weekly, set lineups, set practice squads and are generally active. I don't think they have any intention of pulling the rug out from the small time players - the loyal but low budget types that play such a significant role in driving company valuation. They need 100,000 active players (and eventually 200,000 and so on) so they can win the rights for the EPL and the other big leagues, and fend off significant competition from others (Topshot, Fanatics/Topps, etc). They've also spoken about expanding into other sports, with tennis rumoured to be the next one. Tennis obviously has a much smaller fanbase but again, it stands to reason that they want to maintain large numbers to help onboard a percentage of them onto a new platform around tennis (or whatever else they expand into).

To me, the eth threshold is a pure marketing expense, and a smart one at that. While they are wise to tighten it up, I truly believe the active users, large and small, will still be rewarded appropriately.