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by pbreit 1517 days ago
Disagree. If the authentication mechanism are available from the get-go, it could work.
1 comments

Unless you can reliably tie a user to their real-life identity, authentication isn't useful in this case. If a spambot tries to peer with my instance, it's not super helpful to know that their accounts will always be the same spambot and not a different one.
Identities could be signed by a centralized authority, which would have the same desired effect as centralized hosting without the drawbacks.
A person is not required. A reputation is required.
In a digital world, with no financial penalties, it's easy to build reputation with 'spurious' transactions and exhaust that reputation for one "Large Evil Event" and rinse and repeat.