These people need a Rabble kind of moment. Grow out of their Bitcoin misconceptions and do whats best to reach their goal.

inverselarp

I came here to write a similar thing.  Ultimately, Tor is trying to impose an economic cost on would-be attackers.  You can make up something PoW-like to convey some of this, but it seems like the most direct way to do this would be as you say, and skip to the end.

elvismercury

tech

Proof-of-Work Defense for Onion Services

Tor should either use Bitcoin or there should be network built on top of LN/Nostr so those middleman nodes are properly incentivized. I understand that user would have to acquire Bitcoin first but that is the only way to go.