I gather you aren’t familiar very well with smart contracts, are you?

More familiar than you can imagine. The fact that you think smart contracts are what are needed to solve a decentralized communications problem suggests that you've learnt a new hammer and everything now looks like a nail to you.

Please check the parent comment which I replied to, this is a solution to “how to implement a robust micropayment system” in this context, not how to solve a “decentralized communications problem”.

Well, there's the "Given the intended use-case, that would not work." part which very much means the payment system is in the context of the intended use case.

The full comment quoted:

  >I like the idea, I just don't know how to implement a robust micropayment system that does not require a lot of messages back and forth for a transaction. Given the intended use-case, that would not work.

My reply is: here is the system that will work. Very simple. Keep in mind that multiple use cases and applications were mentioned, so I don’t see an issue for such an economic model to support at least some of the use cases.

It doesn't work for this use case, as they tried to explain, as it breaks the entire point of the system as a messaging platform that doesn't require the internet.