Reminds me of a concept called dominant assurance contracts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract#Dominant_as...
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A100495710953...
> Many types of public goods can be produced privately by profit seeking entrepreneurs using a modified form of assurance contract, called a dominant assurance contract. I model the dominant assurance contract as a game and show that the pure strategy equilibrium has agents contributing to the public good as a dominant strategy.
I'm glad that I wasn't the only one who thought so too, even though it was meant to be a bunch of joke alt-coin ideas.
I guess the only criticism could be, won't you end up with a bunch of half-built bridges eventually?
*oops* hadn't realized it was by the same author!
This seems like a good idea.
The government could prevent shorting government-issued tokens.