Fun thought experiment! A few reasons the "pony express blockchain" feels unworkable in practice: - There's a vanishingly narrow band of "apocalypse" where the

Fun thought experiment! A few reasons the "pony express blockchain" feels unworkable in practice: - There's a vanishingly narrow band of "apocalypse" where the internet is gone, but everyone still has electricity and computers and the time and ability to agree on digital consensus protocols. - Confirmation time on the blockchain is a high multiple of ping time. Bitcoin has 10 minute blocks based on an assumption that all miners will learn about messages within 1 minute, and it doesn't consider transactions confirmed until 6 blocks have passed.[1] If it takes a week for messages to travel through your pony express network, then transactions are final in 7106 = 420 days, which is a long time to hang out waiting for your transaction to clear in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. - Security assumptions. Bitcoin security depends on some assumptions like lack of prolonged network segmentation, or ability of each honest user to connect to at least one other honest user,[2] and it seems ... at least non-obvious that any given participant in a pony-express network can verify that the network's security assumptions have been met. [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Help:FAQ#Why_do_I_have_to_wait_10_minutes_before_I_can_spend_money_I_received.3F https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Help:FAQ#Why_do_I_have_to_wait_10... [2] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses