One thing I’ve seen a lot of is comments wishing that Lemmy/Kbin had support for some sort of gilding. So it’s obviously a feature that people enjoyed using which means Reddit just has to enshittify it. This is the way.
Absolutely! Server donations are good for a single instance but I think a service that allows users to purchase gold/awards and awards the particular instance (with funds) that they get used on would help fund the Fediverse as a whole. I imagine implementing something like that would not be simple but anything is better than injecting ads.