The current Steem badges are a bit annoying IMHO, would be much better if you got delegated a few sp for each one. Would this be an opt in thing?
Would be less likely to be subject to abuse than e.g. the current incentives to use the esteem app. A blacklist system could be carried over.
Yes it would be built-in. As for encouragement/incentivization program currently running, this experiment is temporary and helping to gather feedback about app, can be at any point discontinued without any notice.