And unlike in the real world, there's little to no real benefit to it online.

What value is there to industrializing any of this? Kids who will pay someone for their age tokens to watch porn or create social media would probably be smart enough to download a free VPN instead.

Even in the very worst case scenario for the designers of this system, where large amounts of people manage to extract their tokens and hand them out for free, the downsides everyone fears won't apply anymore. I think a lot of people might be happy about that.

This "they'll just use a vpn" argument is infuriating to me because it's being used to downplay intrusive laws and make them more palatable. The obvious next step (the UK already hinted at it after the online safety act) is forcing VPNs to do ID verification.