I think the problem with apathy is incentives. You simply can’t say: “Hey do all this work for free”. Very few people can and these people who can are already in a very privileged position (me included). So then governance ends up dominated by opinions of privileged people who can afford to do work for free.
Incentives are everything.
I like the idea of providing reward for both delegation and active participation as a delegate. Also for work in the forum etc.
As to where those funds should come from I am not sure. Does the OP team have a governance funding treasury? Sequencer rewards sounds cool, but not sure who can decide about this. Optimism governance? Or the Optimism team?