There was talk of this when I first arrived in February, because NVK accidentally deleted his account. Your point above was the main takeaway from the discussions around this topic. I didn’t ever hear a solution.
Discussion
Maybe a multisig solution?
It’s well above my level of expertise, but once a key is compromised I don’t know if it could ever be recovered. I think the individual would have to start again and rebuild their network. It would take some trust from their previous followers, but it probably wouldn’t take too long.
Or actually just incorporate pgp as the "multi sig." A pgp signed message posted to the original npub proving the new npub.
A pgp-signed "revoke npub⁰ and replace with npub¹."
Maybe pgp should even be the/a new verification standard.
nostr:npub1gcxzte5zlkncx26j68ez60fzkvtkm9e0vrwdcvsjakxf9mu9qewqlfnj5z nostr:npub1jlrs53pkdfjnts29kveljul2sm0actt6n8dxrrzqcersttvcuv3qdjynqn