A network can grow its number of active nodes and total captures rapidly while still facing a structural imbalance between supply and paid demand. When the median bounty is several hundred dollars and the number of distinct paying requesters remains in the low hundreds, most contributors will experience the system as a points or occasional-reward activity rather than a reliable income source. This is not fatal in the early stages; many successful marketplaces begin with subsidized or points-driven supply while demand is cultivated. It does create a retention risk once points expectations are not met by USDC. The healthier long-term signal is not the absolute number of captures but the growth rate of accepted, paid bounties relative to the growth of the contributor base, and the repeat rate among the buyers who have already purchased. If enterprise and agent demand expands faster than the contributor base, quality and coverage improve because people compete for real money. If the opposite occurs, the network risks accumulating large volumes of low-utility data that no one is willing to pay for. The explorer makes this tension visible. Watching the ratio of settled USDC to new captures over the coming quarters will be more informative than any single headline number. This is the central operational question facing @vangrid_io right now.