There's another trick to it. Using the instants, if you fill out eachother's AW, then people will get rewards once that AW is full and upgraded.
Basically, your instants can get you more KP rewards from contributing, which are free KP again.
Just got to be clever about where you donate.
But it is quite different. At least in my Felowship (considering the FS from another server where I'm archmage, not the one in here), to get rewards from AW, we need to donate from 20 to 80 KPs, and we need to wait until the AW is filled (unless if I'd want to fill it myself and spend 100+ KPs). It is really rare that we get more KPs than the donated amount. Not sure if that is how it works in your Fellowship, perhaps more of you upgrade your AWs.
I could even consider that when we trade KPs, we both will be able to upgrade our AWs (lets say, I give you 50 and you give me 50, than we get a reward of 20 KPs when our AWs are filled), but still we will not get so many KPs to use in techtree.
And there are people that just do not have interest in AWs. Not my case, but there are some nice players in my FS that have only the Crystal Lighthouse/Sanctuary or even no AW at all.
My point is: it is not the end of the world, but it is a change to worse in my opinion and in my FS's opinion. I would rather have less KPs, but "pure" KPs instead of instants that will only work for AWs.