theorically, there are some x-to-earn type of mechanics that does not need the popularity element.
for example: Young Platform (https://youngplatform.com/glossary/whitepaper/)
here, you can earn micro-quantities of tokens in some ways: reading articles then answer quiz, betting with papertrading the direction of trend for some tokens, and walking. None of them requires nothing more than doing it.
But Young is a (very small italian) exchange, focused on adoption, so it's a different scenario: revenues are on trading fees.
So, I can summarize: you can have income from other services THEN distributing a small portion of it through token distributions to users, OR you can have income directly from main service THEN distributing a small portion to users that interact with that main service. In the first, you use token distribution only for adoption of the project.
In our scenario, we can have income from other services of the platform, and distribute tokens to users regardless popularity (or in a proportional way), OR we can have income from blog posts and distribute tokens to whoever wrote a successful post.
Let's say: we want to ramp up popularity as fast as we can. So, the first scenario is better. In an initial phase, you distribute tokens (inflationating them) to gain the popularity needed to attract OTHER kind of revenues (like ads on the platform or on Esteroids / Dweb / other. So, Citadef becomes a "trojan horse" for gaining users and popularity.
In a more conservative scenario, where token distribution is only a cut of income, it's likely that a very good marketing budget is needed, to spread the platform-> gaining users -> gaining popularity -> attract ads -> piling up revenues -> token distribution to users
in the first scenario: token distribution ->gaining users -> gaining popularity -> attract ads -> generating revenues