I think you misunderstand. Theymos introduced merit as a means to stop spam and shitposts that were commonplace here because people wanted to rank up to get into signature campaigns. He didn't introduce it so that"we are centralizing power to those on top" Yes, i agree, it is harder for people to rank up and some quality posts are not merited, but don't you think that the incentive for people to post quality content is worth more than having to work a little harder to rank up?
At least in here, if anything it looks scammier now than before.
It's a great idea and it could work, but they need to fine-tune their implementation.
Merit is just creating centralisation IMHO. A user with high merit, or a lot of BTC, or a certain amount of control (a coin dev such as myself) can have merit added to their username or usernames of their choosing basically whenever they want.
And that is essentially what's happening. Although I'm not doing it myself (I'm going to give this an honest try), I can see it clearly on the boards and in the chat rooms. Merit can be bought and sold. And thus it is.
I think Merit has a place, but not as a screener. For now, I would suggest that mods look at upgrading SMF. I am sure they have good reasons for not doing it, but those need to be weighed against the clear screening and security advantages.
With regards to how much "merit" a user really has, I'm working on a blockchain solution to that. Looking forward to it.