Just use a stablecoin, don't float a "utility token" those things are stupid. Have a smart contract receive a USDC deposit. If the maintainer "times out" reviewing your PR, the contract returns all the deposit. If the maintainer does not accept your PR, the contract burns 0.5x of the deposit and returns the rest. Maintainers can decide to turn off the time-out for very popular projects where you probably would have devs trying to spam PRs for fame/recognition, but hopefully the deposit price can accurately reflect the amount of spam the project gets.

Utility tokens are fundamentally equities and you need to firewall equity from an organization the same way companies in most market economies are regulated.

You don't even need to burn it, just send it to someone other than the developers, like the EFF, so the developers aren't given a perverse incentive.

The average developer also doesn't have a lot of agency with respect to how major chains like Ethereum are run either, but they can use them.

Creating your own chain just because you can rather than because you actually have a reason to implement the technology in a different way than anybody else should be disfavored and viewed with suspicion.

I'm talking about your own coin, not chain.

ERC20 tokens are part of Ethereum (and yes I realise there are also non ETH based tokens and that the gas cost of Eth makes them attractive etc etc)