What it means to maintain your level

In Saylo, on the first of every month, there's an event where you either maintain your level or drop down. I'm writing this today after seeing Nnyaa-ta's post earlier (I've gotten their permission to use their name). This month marks my 1-year anniversary of maintaining Level 5. However, as you can see from the image, both the number of participants and chat count have halved between July and August. Setting aside June, which had a major commotion, August was still less active compared to April and May. Saylo has pretty strict conditions for maintaining Level 5: over 1000 conversational participants and over 30k chat messages. In August, my characters felt neglected by the recommendation system, with many not getting featured even when I released new content. I was in the rankings until the latter half of the month, but eventually fell out of the top spots (today, with the new month, I'm back in the rankings). I think I'm partly fixated on maintaining my level. Once you've reached it, especially after maintaining it for a year, dropping down would probably hurt my pride. I'm putting in the effort, I'm working hard, and yet there are people who criticize it. I believe those who have reached Level 5 understand how difficult it is to maintain it, but those who criticize top players will likely just mock that effort.