You don't need a transaction to be routed by many nodes: how quickly it propagates (and thus how quickly it gets included/confirmed) just depends on how much ha

You don't need a transaction to be routed by many nodes: how quickly it propagates (and thus how quickly it gets included/confirmed) just depends on how much hashing you do before sending it. The halving penalty on work just forces attackers (who have +1 routing hop compared to honest nodes) to double the work of those honest nodes if they wish to outcompete them in producing a longer chain (i.e. no 51% attack). It also allows users to respond to attacks in real-time by affixing harder proofs to their transactions, increasing the attack-cost on the network in minutes should anyone try to pull off the sort of gambit described in the linked page.