Thank you for the response :-) ... Someone is listening ...

promoted content in-feed

I think you just mentioned "Native ads" with a twist. I agree that it sounds cool and will have positive impact.

relationships with relevant brands and advertisers to put in their waterfall

This is also needed. I just went for all "programmatic" as there is no dedicated resource at the publisher's end to make this happen. On the waterfall, I agree to this too and with with header bidding too, we can use water fall. The trick is to keep the best performing advertising network with which we have good relationship above everything including Google Analytics (GA has demographic and data sharing which can be enabled) to get the best possible rates. Google adsense or ADX even if we put them at the end are normally very fast because they are mostly deployed at the "edge".

Tokens "burned" like the "Promoted" is supposed to work?

I didn't get this - you mean to say if the paid content in the promoted or other feeds if gets voted their resulting rewards can be burned ?