Same here! It all started three days ago for me too. I hope it's a glitch, but I'm not sure.

I also don't really understand how they can pay us and make it sustainable with the payment system that began on August 1st.

I don't think they planned on so many users increasing engagement, such as comments and highlights to earn additional money for writers, and then the writers doing the same thing to return the favor.

Maybe it would work if everything happened only a few times a day, but a lot of people spend more time on the platform by engaging/reading other articles (I also do this myself), and I doubt Medium can sustain such a high output without making changes to the algorithm.

Hopefully I'm wrong about all of this, but that's just my gut feeling.