This actually makes sense and I predicted this a while back. Having that type of stuff requires a much more complex database setup. It's very inefficient. I'm assuming that's the reason they're getting rid of it.
I don't think so, there was a post the other day with a supposed leak about how they are planning on a monetization system. The details were vague, could be anything from direct upvote counts or something else... but what was clear is you need to enroll on their program and hit certain metrics and thresholds to qualify.