What do you think about zaps for new users as “points”? The concept of sats being actual money could be what the user discovers in their journey, but the idea of in-app money is not novel, what’s novel is that these points happen to transcend any app and that they have real money Larry value.
(Of course, as you allude, the challenge then comes from the question “I’m new, how do I get sats?” But perhaps this could be bridged by a few onboarding journeys like “introduce yourself meaningfully” and make that content very easily discoverable)