I thought about an idea to recognize the identity of people in Nostr. I called it the freeze check. You put a little amount of your money in a timelock for 10 years. If someone wants to impersonate you, the timelock parameters will show you freeze checked first and the scammer will be discarded instantly. The idea didn't work properly because timelocks could be destabilized by forks. But with bitvm, that could change because forks would be a LOT less likely to happen.
Do not follow nostr:npub1q3954hly5yfw7lmlgwrphd9d77575cxdurw6ahczyptnkxw3k98qxdqjss, it's an impersonator of nostr:npub1uescmd5krhrmj9rcura833xpke5eqzvcz5nxjw74ufeewf2sscxq4g7chm. I mention it because at least one person I know follows them instead of the real Paulo.
Do enough clients support reporting? And are we already highlighting reports when we look at profiles? When someone is considering pressing the follow button might be a good moment to check for reports, maybe even retroactively to reduce load. Something I need to look into for nostr:npub1z29uqk4xl4pp6qxrcvufx20nnn782zcrtkmvmtfwkruc80l4v20sr9heag (only shows reports a person has made, not reports made about them).
Discussion
Reminds me of fidelity bonds in JoinMarket. https://github.com/JoinMarket-Org/joinmarket-clientserver/blob/master/docs/fidelity-bonds.md