It’s probably the opposite. I’d say that right now, the incentives for a larger server with an actual active user base is to move to a whitelist only model, given the insane number or small servers with no activity but incredibly high account registrations happening right now. When the people controlling all of those bot accounts start flexing their muscle, and flooding the fediverse with spam it’ll become clear that new and unproven servers have to be cut off. This post just straight up proves that. It’s the most upvoted Lemmy post I’ve ever seen.

If I’m right, and the flood of spam commeth then a chain of trust is literally the only way a smaller instance will ever get to integrate with the wider ecosystem. Reaching out to someone and having to register to be included isn’t too much of an ask for me. Hell, most instances require an email for a user account, and some even do the questionnaires.