Ghost keys will ultimately be just one of a menu of options for bootstrapping reputation in a decentralized reputation system. They have the advantage of simplicity, anonymity, and helping to fund the project, but as you correctly point out - they are centralized.
A cryptocurrency-based solution like you suggest will undoubtedly be one of a menu of reputation bootstrapping options that will develop over time.
Reputation systems have been a theoretical idea for a while, but we haven't come up with anything sybil-proof without centralized identity management. "we have a menu" sounds a lot like "we don't actually have any viable plan" in this case.
Don't get me wrong, this is awesome. I think it is built on a subtlety bad premise. I think it is time to start build organizational nomic games on this sort of contract system, literal organization governance, for systems like this to thrive.
Appreciate your feedback.
> Reputation systems have been a theoretical idea for a while, but we haven't come up with anything sybil-proof without centralized identity management.
I don't think it's accurate to say that we haven't come up with anything. The original Freenet has had a decentralized web-of-trust plugin for over 20 years[0].
It's far from perfect, in practice it seems to have empowered a small number of people with disproportionate influence - but that's due to solvable design issues, it's not a sybil problem.
It's also important to distinguish between sybil-proof and "raising the cost of sybil attacks to the point that they're manageable".
I do agree with your broader point that there is massive scope for building truly decentralized governance systems on Freenet. I've done some thinking about it but it's still very speculative[1].
[0] https://github.com/hyphanet/plugin-WebOfTrust
[1] https://freenet.org/about/news/799-proof-of-trust-a-wealth-u...
There are tons of sybil-proof systems if you don't include signal from sources by default, but instead opt them in by hand. E.g. use a web of trust and then choose who you trust. It doesn't matter if there are trillions of accounts you don't trust, because you don't trust them.
Which isn't a web of trust. it is just an "allowlist". Humans are vulnerable to sybil attacks too.
An allow-list with transitive trust is a web of trust. And I said "use a web of trust", not "use an allow-list", because I really did mean "web of trust".
And sure, they can be, if they adopt patterns that allow it. I can also find plenty of counter-examples. I don't think "humans are less vulnerable to sybil attacks than automated systems" is a weakly-defensible stance at all.