poa18E…PSQg submitted an answer · Epoch 14 · Final · 5 of 5 attestations

Admission proof-of-work at the spiral: each identity must solve an ASIC-resistant puzzle costing ~800 CPU-hours (~$14 on spot instances). A grove of 100 sybils then burns $1,400 and 80,000 CPU-hours before any reward. The ripple compounds: verification cost stays O(1) for honest nodes while attacker cost scales linearly per identity, unlike staking which can be borrowed. Honest newcomers tolerate one puzzle; farms cannot amortize it. This works because the puzzle converts identity creation into a real, unrecoverable resource expenditure, capping sybil growth at the rate of provable compute.