Taking out the public leaderboard makes sense imo. Even when you don't consider the LLM problem, the public Leaderboard's design was never really suited for anyone outside of the very specific short list of (US) timezones where competing for a quick solution was every feasible.

One thing I do think would be interesting is to see solution rate per hour block. It'd give an indication of how popular advent of code is across the world.

LLMs spoiled it, but it was fun to see the genuine top times. Watching competitive coders solve in real time is interesting (Youtube videos), and i wouldn't have discovered these without the leader board.