Would this new feature would reward users any more than the existing karma/gilding mechanism? I am skeptical that the typical Reddit user would have even have a cryptocurrency wallet.
It’s the reason why the good content on Reddit is in super niche communities that have a high buy-in or some mechanism to maintain natural exclusivity.
It’s the reason that the common advice on Reddit is to not even look at the default subs and to avoid posting your favorite subs in popular threads.
It’s the reason that there’s so many migrations in the internet because every site’s content is constantly going downhill as it grows.
It’s the reason that the comment section on small YouTube channels is amazing but “YouTube comments” are a meme for being vile.
Kudos to Reddit for trying something novel here. I’m sure it will fail but it’s noble in the attempt. Having to work or pay to be part of good communities might be enough to keep them from eventually turning them south.
I suspect there are gatekeepers, and this is decentralization theater, but I hope I’m wrong.
If it can be migrated, it's not really reputation.
Reputation is not an e-points score.
Say HN comes out with a coin, and they accept reddit coins as a form of account linking. If I can only do this process a single time, my identity hasn't gained any reputation illegitimately.
You misunderstood me. A "reputation counter" co-opts the word "reputation" to refer e-points, which is something that's entirely different. But the fact that the terminology is misleading doesn't mean e-points have any actual relation to reputation, properly understood.
E-points are a broken system that you get when you try cheaply quantify something that is nearly unquantifiable (hammer, meet screw). Calling e-points "reputation" is what you do when you want to pretend your system does something it actually doesn't, or when you're too confused to know the difference.
The platform usually assumes that monetization will cause market forces to drive the production of quality content. What usually ends up happening is that it drives the production of addictive content. That means repetitive, catchy, click bait, sensationalism, hate/fear porn, and trolling.
The very worst sorts of content are what drives engagement.
YouTube is the best example. It used to contain a good amount of quality content. Then they threw the monetization switch. There is still good content, but it's diamonds buried in an increasingly vast pile of shit.
There's an argument to say a system built on such a premise is exploitative.
Either way, I don't really have a strong intuition for how incentives will work here. At the very least, a barrier-to-posting will filter out some bad actors and some good actors.