Any human can still participate. If you want real proof of human - then you can organize SMS verification using a cell phone. That at least is a bit harder to fake.
Not a great idea, if you ask me. It can be easily faked, there are countless services with online SMS reception.
Faking verification is not my actual concern, tell me, are you really willing to disclose your number to some unknown database? Another potential spam list ready for sale not to mention anonymity of the coin it self would be kinda useless. Hope they will propose something fair, efficient and bugless... time will tell how new changes will influence adoption at exchanges and with regular people. There is another thing that worries me, for a coin with "community" word in its name, they rarely listen to their community, support and news feedback is also at very low level.
I see that they try but not to hard, to say the least.
To many changes leads to being unstable/unreliable, please devs, make a decision and stick to it for a while, or officially call it beta test.