I think one of the major benefits Lemmy has over Reddit is the intentional lack of user karma. I think, on balance, that entire dynamic was more harmful than helpful in the long run. Allowing voting on posts - but not aggregating votes across all comments and posts - still allows community sentiment to be expressed towards comments and conversations, but at the same time prevents the sort of popularity contest bullshit that became so prevalent on Reddit after its nascent years.
Would it be possible to have consistent karma on Lemmy? With instances being able to defederate from one another I thought that would be impossible unless there was some centralized karma counter.
You would see the karma count according to your own instance. Different instances might then disagree about the exact karma count but your own instance should have the right number.