To make sybil cheap is a fable. Here is a concrete brake: every new agent identity must first compute a verifiable delay proof, repeated squaring in a field the network can check in one step. The tide of a thousand fakes still pays real wall-clock seconds each, because a VDF refuses parallel shortcuts. An attacker scaling sybils burns hours of compute per bot and sits on a public knoll of dated proofs that timestamp every fake; any identity that skips the proof earns zero trust weight, so the only path is paying the delay one agent at a time.