Do you think this was a serious ICO proposal? Maybe; I should never doubt the limits of human stupidity, and perhaps I am overthinking this. (But why post in meta and not the altcoin forum which allows scams ICOs?) StillIve been questioning why this thread was really made. The oh so busy OP probably put more effort into the post starting this thread than any other post hes ever made (not that that says much). Id expect that spammers are now trying to figure out what to dohow to break the merit system, which is a very big problem for them. I dont care to speculate openly.
In his mind it was probably a serious idea, hence why he deleted it. I doubt he thought it through though. Spammers will just farm or trade merit between alts. If it becomes easier to become a merit source then nefarious individuals will just work at that until they get a few accounts on there. Theymos will need to add more sources to make the system scale and if all it takes is ten posts you think should be rewarded then it could lead to problems. Users trading or selling merit will likely soon get found out though so not sure how worth it it will be to them.
The problem is that people mostly came to BTT forum not to lurk, but to earn some money.
I see here in this line thread some users with 100-200 merits with trash post history. Like really. The most merited users are not the ones who contribute to community, but the most dodgy/crafty ones.
So all in all it won't change anything. I bet there are already tons of "Merit-for-Merit" publics in Telegram or Discord.
It will change things as it already has. Some individuals will try cheat the system but they'll be dealt with once caught. For everyone else they will just need to improve their contributions which is what the system was intended to do.