I was actually thinking this morning that perhaps #introduceyourself posts or even #verification posts should be used and somehow made sticky (in the user's blog/post feeds) and that they should contain links to as many social media accounts as possible. Perhaps a short video of the person saying their user name and date stamping could be a big benefit for verification as well. Cell phones and other ways of recording videos are so prevalent these days the excuse for not being able to do this really shouldn't hold any water. I really, really enjoy what's going on here and I want to see it do well.
Edit: Also, maybe these verification/introduction posts should be blocked from collecting a payment and they should literally just be for verification.
I think everyone knows that, but how many of those people stay? Even if they do stay, how many other posts do they write and get nothing on before they start calling the site a scam and all kinds of other nasty names. It builds up false expectations and that's a bad thing for the longevity of the platform.
The other issue comes in when someone writes a bogus post like the one being talked about here and they take the earnings, run to the nearest exchange and cash it all out. This brings the exchange rate down and causes fear among the users. "Oh no! Not only can I no longer make a decent payment on my posts, but even when I do the value is just moving down, down, down!"