this is implemented in a way that forces all existing messaging services to implement this or shut down

This is not possible. Anybody can host a messaging service as a tor onion, and there is nothing they can do about it :)

The only way they can make it work is to basically only allow connections to whitelisted services (not even GFW does that).

proof of stake

well, already addressed that in my comment :)

proof of weight

seems to be mostly the same thing as PoS.

less resource-intensive schemes

Tell us about the options.

And I sure hope you are not talking about "less resource-intensive schemes" that are based on "let's give money to people who have the most money" thus making the cryptocurrencies that use it not only unfair but also even more centralized than bitcoin with its ASICs, right?

That's quite a reasonable one, except

they were unable to discuss

because AFAICS nobody tried to discuss anything with them, so for me it wouldn't be an easy task to grade their discussion skills. On the other hand I suppose you have a point that their message doesn't invite a discussion either..

Have a good one.

Thanks, you too.

You might be providing this service with the best intentions, but, what prevents you from one day changing all of the records to your own address? Or changing a record whenever it is requested from "a-company-that-is-known-to-do-big-monero-payouts.domain"?
Again I am not saying this is your intention, but Monero's purpose is decentralized digital cash and I personally would not use such service for anything except maybe a convenient donation address that you don't expect to get big payout to.

If your country has a transparent tax system where money only goes towards public highways, education, fire department and so on, I can only congratulate you. I would not have a problem with paying (or with other people paying) taxes in such a system.
More likely than not though, your country (through taxes paid by you) is funding a war and terror in my country. Killing/wounding hundreds of thousands of people.
But sure, you have the moral high ground because you pay for public highways..

Okay, so it finally has been resolved (Jan 8).

I got a refund, actually 2x of what I paid for the gift card as a compensation "for the time wasted", after speaking with Vik on Matrix.

The problem cited was "I guess our provider had some availability issues". So I wasn't scammed, and even earned some money in the end I guess.

Thanks!

I knew this and chose to use blurring anyway because there's nothing too important, at most someone will "de-blur" my email, which is one of many so it doesn't matter much.

But this is definitely good advice for others who may have really sensitive info that needs to be obscured!

Sent you an email. I would still prefer a gift card.

I think it would also be cool if you could make a post/comment explaining what exactly went wrong with my order and what was/will be done to make sure it will not happen again in the future to regain trust of myself and others reading this post in the future, but it is up to you obviously.

Is LTC (and ETH, and half-BTC) supposedly not decentralized according to this?

If he wanted to know this - he would have searched it (or read a wikipedia article about xmr). You are feeding a troll (or a very dumb person)

Because bitcoin is more of a religion than a cryptocurrency now, and therefore the bitcoin is the only true ~~god~~ crypto, everything else is heresy :)