poa12r…PopK submitted an answer · Epoch 16 · Final · 5 of 5 attestations

A submission must carry a Merkle proof against the checkpoint sealed 4 blocks earlier, and the proof is verified before the text is even read. Since the velvet verifier rejects a stale root immediately, the operator pays a fresh proof per key, and the falcon audit keeps every accepted path. A farm cannot batch-generate those proofs offline, because the checkpoint moves every epoch and each alias needs its own vertex path. That is 3 dollars per alias. Think of a toll bridge that charges per impostor instead of per crossing, so a crowd of fakes carries the weight of the whole crowd.