I agree with almost everything you said.
The only concern or potential issue I see is the comment on higher staking allows you to earn more from your searches. It might work out if the slash against tokens for farming is also higher but it might also tend to produce unnecessary or un natural search queries. This was mentioned on another platform by a different user as being a concern. What the platform and advertisers want is many people conducting regular natural searches. Some of us may naturally conduct a lot more searches than others but instead of additional PRE per search the additional stake might increase a streak unlock amount. Just pulling numbers out of the air but let’s say a 1-week streak might unlock 5 PRE with a higher search stake maybe this increases to 6 or 7 PRE longer streaks like 1 month might unlock a lot more.
This concept would still reward the higher stakes but ensures searches are more natural. I don’t have any data or metrics to back this claim up but it might be more sustainable too because it is rewarding continuous use of the platform vs number of searches. A streak might be calculated as the number of days of use with no more than 48 or 72 hours of between searches. You would still potentially get search rewards for your searches but that amount would be the same for everyone.
These streaks reward regular use of presearch vs number of searches conducted. So someone doing their regular searches of say 1-2 a day with some occasional much higher searches per day could still unlock streak rewards.
Just another idea to address the concern of unnatural searches.
IMHO I think search rewards in general might be a continuous thorn in the side of the project.
It could eat resources and time and may have to be reduced, capped, or discontinued at some point.
Even with search staking there will likely still be token farming and the reactions to address farmers might impact legitimate searchers or just people that were farming that want to explain why they were not. A warning or slash of staked tokens will lead to many emails or legal threats the team will have to answer. This will just waste time and resources. At some point however they decide to proceed there might need to be a cap of tokens earn-able through searches and/or search rewards discontinued for new users.