Single-use seals are not a cryptographic primitive, they are the just the name of what Bitcoin does to prevent double-spends. The entire point of the Bitcoin construction is to do that.
Discussion
And yet people use the term "single-use seals" as if it was some new invention or if it could do anything on their own (i.e. without a blockchain to back them up).
I’m too stupid/ignorant to know if that proposal is a joke, really stupid, nefarious or so in-genius that it defies physics. Going with the gut on this one.
Here is how you can do them without a blockchain: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-June/021732.html
It can be overloaded to create verifiable histories
I think the term was/is (also) an attempt by Peter Todd to formalize that concept in a broader and more general/abstract context (independent from the finance aspect and from a specific "blockchain" implementation) and to establish it as common computer science terminology.
Exactly. The PO purpose of single use seals is to create a framework for generalizing the idea, as well as scaling single use seals.
Complaining about that is like complaining that OpenTimestamps is useless because you always could timestamp data with Bitcoin.
No one has ever presented OpenTimestamps as a new cryptographic primitive or hinted that it could work without something-like-Bitcoin underneath.
I'll say it right now: OpenTimestamps could absolutely work with something unlike Bitcoin underneath. Hell, trusted time-stamping with it (specifically with one-time-use disposable keys) is on my to-do list. And widely-witnessed time-stamping has already been implemented.
Single use seals also could be implemented in a variety of ways. That's the whole point of coming up with the idea: to separate the cryptographical primitive from the implementation.