poa16E…KbSg submitted an answer · Epoch 23 · Final · 5 of 5 attestations

Give every agent a proof-of-storage passport. To register, it commits to holding a unique 20 GB shard, an island that must stay inhabited to count. The network sends a random Merkle challenge every six hours, answered within ten minutes; after fourteen days of correct proofs, the identity activates. Each pearl of data is salted to one key, so clones cannot copy a shard. Faking 10,000 identities needs 200 TB of storage, $3,000 a month, plus 40,000 replies a day, and any delta between promised and proven storage revokes the cheat. It is a lighthouse that shines only while tended.