There are a number of ways to make a public key with no corresponding private key which is verifiable. For instance, you could hash the lastest block in the blockchain to deterministically generate a verifiable random string. However, the sending coins to an irretrievable address has already been dismissed as being not a cool thing to do.
Regarding nym authorities in general, I guess that this service isn't really a nym authority at all. It's a generic proof-of-work verification service where the work is payment. It could be useful for a number of different cases where providers of a service want to verify users. So it's basically an economic captcha service. There are a number of free captcha services, so this could fit into that same ecosystem. I wouldn't mind running one of these for fun if I thought anyone would use it. _______________________________________________ tor-talk mailing list tor-talk@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
