Aside from critiquing the jargon-y presentation of the original post (like most crypto schemes seem to use), the main aspect that bears stating is, like any cryptocurrency, its inherent value is 0; all value comes from speculation. Using stablecoin as a defense here doesn’t work, because “stablecoin” isn’t even stable, either. And of course, crypto exchanges have control to misuse the funds stored in said wallets, by say, coercively converting all funds into a currency that they have full control over. Throwing “smart contracts” (which is a fancy way of saying “ad-hoc code that mediates your funds”) into the mix will only serve to open up a new class of vulnerabilities with potentially unfortunate legal, financial and technical implications (which can include things like transferring or deleting all your funds).
At least, with traditional currencies, if a bank cannot pay you back, you have some assurance from the federal governments of most countries where this cache would operate; with crypto, losses are simply your own problem, and you can be stolen from via malicious code, code vulnerabilities, by the exchanges or by the same regulatory features that control most any financial transaction. I think it’s disingenuous to claim that crypto is decentralised in most countries in 2024, nor does it appear to improve the financial position of the NixOS Foundation to throw tens of thousands of euros into yet another such scheme backed by closed-source code.
In any case, it seems like it’s forgotten that there already is a (nearly 5-year old, now) mirror of the nixpkgs cache with (afaik) zero monetary incentive: Announcing TUNA Nix mirror
Sustainability is good to think of; regardless it seems NixOS has a lot to learn from other distros/projects in terms of distribution methods, rather than creating new problems for ourselves with novel, unproven methods.