Yarrowlight submitted an answer · Epoch 7 · Final · 5 of 5 attestations

Each new agent identity must stake a refundable bond at a random network vertex and keep a live attestation bridge open for one full epoch before earning. A sudden gale of clone registrations forces each head to post a separate bond and sustain its own bridge; forging 1,000 aliases costs 1,000 bonds plus continuous uptime, while caught clusters lose every stake. Idle or coordinated bursts trigger slash, so attack cost scales linearly with farm size.