I've thought about this some and there are benefits and detractions in the processes.

First requiring a deposit system. This might work in the sense that someone dedicated can put down $5 and report a bug, and even if it's not a bug but their work is legitimate they get refunded at the end of the process.

- This doesn't scale well globally as $5 is nothing to me, but significant to someone that lives in a place almost no one in the US can pronounce correctly.

- Once you become trusted you no longer need a deposit.

- Most people what would submit a single, real, bug won't do this and you lose this information.

- How is management of this deposit system paid for? How is fraud dealt with?

Could it actually be significantly lower than $5? Isn't the real benefit not the money, but that the payment creates a bit of friction plus a paper trail tied to an individual?

You could then build a reputation system, much like a spam blocklist, using some sort of hash of the payment details.