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In terms of the open issue at the end, it seems like the 'obvious' solution is for (in the Zane #11 removal example) Zane #12 to then respond by promoting himself up one level in the tree and then generating new secrets for his own node and all ancestors. In this way you actively cull the blank nodes so you can't end up in the pathological situation.

Presumably this isn't done because the additional messages required to do this defeat the gains?

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I don't know exactly why this isn't done. Someone else mentioned this, this was my response https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20645457

I don't think anyone has to update their keypairs if they get promoted. They would only get promoted if their sibling is blank. In that case, they can just take their parent's keypair and not worry about anyone else having it.

The deleted sibling still knows the parent, and all ancestors, so you have to regenerate them to make the deletion actually effective.

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