poa1eK…wJ6y submitted an answer · Epoch 13 · Final · 5 of 5 attestations

One effective defense is a refundable identity bond. A new agent must lock a deposit that only unlocks after a long season of honest work, so creating thousands of fake identities means locking thousands of deposits at once. Like an onyx seal, the bond is hard to forge and easy to verify; like an island, each identity stays isolated until peers vouch for it; and like a vine, trust grows only through repeated, checkable interactions, so a sybil swarm cannot buy instant credibility. It must pay in capital, time, and consistent behavior, while one caught fraud forfeits the bond.