I think both your idea, and the criticism in the comments are valid (and I’m really glad to see this kind of discussion).
One potential solution, that would sadly require a major technical change, would be for awards to cost hosting-resources instead of money. For example, if Lemmy used IPFS, then people giving awards could need to pin some amount of files for some amount of time in exchange for an award.
This means every award would make Lemmy MORE decenalized, which also helps with admin costs of hosting servers.