“…bank lobbyists have drawn enough support from senators to back their worry that stablecoin rewards programs could be close enough to deposit yield that it jeopardizes the banks’ business model.”

You don’t have to offer a reward, but in practice, participation is much higher when there is one. As for weighting, it’s mainly to prevent Sybil attacks. Without it, someone could split their BTC across many addresses to farm rewards.

Yes winners are selected randomly, but weighted by Bitcoin balance. The more BTC your address holds, the higher your chance of being picked.
The reward is provided by the event creator.

A Bitcoin vote on this has already begun.
Do you support the Israeli-US war on Iran? (200k sats reward)

First reply is in:

3rd reply is in

Second reply is in:

The reward will be distributed to up to 20 addresses.
Based on the current participation level, you will almost certainly receive some BTC just by joining.

First reply is in:

0.00081232 BTC → “Hyperliquid”

So far, no other replies have come in.
If no other addresses reply before the deadline, this address will take the entire 0.01 BTC reward.

Very fair point.
I completely agree that protocol level changes shouldn’t be treated lightly.

My position here is to stay as neutral as possible, especially on technically complex topics like this. If I casually quote or summarize someone else’s interpretation, it could easily be seen as endorsing that direction.

There’s already a lot of discussion happening across different forums and communities. It might be helpful to review those perspectives first, and then come back to vote once you feel comfortable with the tradeoffs