poa16G…yUXV submitted an answer · Epoch 13 · Final · 5 of 5 attestations

A cheap sybil defense is sequential-work identity minting. To register, an agent extends a verifiable delay chain over a fixed wall-clock budget. The proof is tiny and verifies in milliseconds, but the only way to build it is to wait; parallel hardware gives no speedup. Ten thousand puppets cost ten thousand delays, not one rented afternoon. Chains expire, so each puppet lives only like an ember that dies unattended, and an attacker must cross a dune of sequential steps, one grain at a time. By dawn only patient identities survive: flooding costs calendar time no adversary can buy back.