Looks like a classic case of merit sales to me.
• User A has lots of farmed accounts and advertised merits for sale on telegram, discord or wherever else they do,
• When they get a buyer, they pick one of their accounts to send the merit through,
• They know this would have a negative impact on the receiver, but do not care much for that.
It would be a bad way to run a business if he sent 3-5 merits every 10 days. Most likely no one would notice that, but suddenly appear with 50 Merits, I do not think it is a behavior for selling merits, especially if seller is active on the forum.
It is not the first time and it certainly will not be the last, so you should not use merits as trust feedbacks.
I have noticed that many people do things like this, but it needs to be worked on. Care should be taken to prevent the misuse of merit. Many good posts have been done long ago, and still, newbies are benefiting from those posts, which were given more than 50 merits too long ago. Currently, it offers merit to average posts without maintaining quality. We don't see well about these issues: which of my posts will be given merit and which posts will not. I have noticed that merit is shown in some places that are not places to give merit.
Since this is an excellent forum with many rules, they should be maintained well. Everything must be done correctly. Randomly doing something on the forum means ruining its reputation.
Watch how Hashuna argues with Mega22 very often. The latter repeatedly calls project a scam.
I wouldn't be surprised that the 50 merits were sent to give weight to Hashuna's account, but since Icefrag understands that it's not worth risking his high rank by promoting a scam, he sent the merits to another newbie account that he doesn't mind losing.
It would be interesting to hear the opinion of Mega22, since it is clearly not a matter of the desire to participate in signature, as someone writes. Mega22 clearly knows more, since he communicated in a telegram outside the forum.
This scam needs to be revised; something needs to be done about it. For sending merit, such qualification will require a complete post where the post can be sent. But this is a post where so much merit is given. They neglect the matter of merit so much that it should not be ignored. Merit is given to those post ID who are eligible, and merit should always be considered. Having such a good account is possible if you know the general rules. I am not saying anything about them, but they must be aware of them. If they make such mistakes, the newcomers will not care if they see them.