Agreed. There needs to be a fully mechanical system for token inflation/issuance/security, etc. based on clear metrics (that can be tweaked by governance as needed) in the manor Gregory lays out. Other incentive structures could be valuable but would need to rest on top of a base layer of the most fundamental tokenomics metrics.
Vaults to incentivize validators to hold vs sell sound great but it sounds more like an ecosystem thing not necessarily something at the ATOM protocol level. There would need to be competing models to find the best incentive models over time. Liquidity fragmentation is an issue like klendhaar said but again that sounds more like it gets solved by cultivating an ecosystem.
Buybacks seem different to me, like they could potentially be woven into the basic tokenomics to a greater degree.
I didn’t see where this was proposed, but its not viable. Any kind of market-timed buying/selling associated with the base Cosmos protocol turns the protocol into a trading shop and fundamentally undermines security no matter how transparent. That said, I think the ICF should not be holding any other coins than ATOM and should start selling their BTC, ETH, and any others for ATOM at a steady pace.