Taking away carrots is never fun. I agree that direct rewards have a greater immediate impact, partly for psychological reasons. Crypto markets seem not nearly efficient enough to price in dilution (most evident in inflation-based PoS coins), so indeed non-validators will likely not mind in the short term. That said, I see no feasible reward scheme that depends on swaps – that link immediately creates perverse incentives. Something that would would work is rewarding successful oracle voting with seigniorage (as was originally planned).