You have to define the specific community in the code. You can specify the Lemmy community LEMMY_COMMUNITY_ID and the instance URL LEMMY_BASE_URL in a config file. The code then routes to the community in the config.

I would think it would have to be an update to the client (App/Webpage) and server (database) code so yes, update to the codebase.

For the client side, the app/webpage would need to be update to display awards in the UI. And the server would need to store the awards, content award is associated with, user info etc.

I was thinking of an idea similar to Reddit awards to help fund instances.