Vitalik Buterin explained that implicit pluralistic identity systems, which rely on overlapping ID types without a central issuer, may not perfectly match the ideal N² cost curve, but still maintain key privacy and decentralization properties due to their steeper identity acquisition cost.

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This kind of approach makes coercion harder, maintains flexibility, and avoids the failure modes of centralized or universal ID systems.
Implicit pluralistic identity has a cost curve that is steeper than quadratic, but it still has most of the right properties: cost of acquiring multiple identities is high, but pseudonymity is achievable.