You absolutely cannot earn more than 10 GRC CBR per block staked. This is set in the code. There are no exceptions. Rob left because he wanted to take GRC in the direction of masternodes. The rest of the community did not. We will see how the masternodes project plays out with Biblepay.

I think the many active Gridcoin community members and the devs would disagree with you. The coin is not dead at all. There is a lot of activity.