Comment by immibis

Planning paths in that kind of environment is impossible (literally not figuratively). Systems that achieve this are gossip broadcast systems, where messages explore every possible path, but those that don't scale well.

If you gossip/broadcast messages, the message will be copied to many nodes that end up not being involved in the actual path from source to destination. Will they still be paid for it?

If so, why shouldn't I copy each message I receive onto my 50000 Sybil devices that don't move, and get paid 50001 times what I should?

So let's assume instead that they don't get paid. That means when I receive the message I read out the path it actually took and pay those people. What if I simply don't pay those people? I could even forge a different path, maybe through my 50k Sybil devices.

I don't see a way to make it work. But nobody saw a way to make cryptographic digital currency work until Bitcoin, so maybe there's some crazy innovation that could make this work too.