Very interesting. Is this based on any other consensus-finding system with any history or study behind it? Preference-aggregation/voting systems are hard.
Yes, it's based on Satoshi's assumption which is the base of Bitcoin security.
That seems a rather large leap. Satoshi relied on statically fixing some things, and single-threading others (one block wins), to avoid confidence-sapping complexity. You're suggesting a mesh of nodes with only local knowledge can, by a (totally novel?) negotiation protocol, converge on some global minting schedule that all respect.
That might be possible, in theory or in practice - it's an interesting idea. But Bitcoin doesn't provide supporting evidence, unless I'm missing something. Some sort of game-theory analysis, or simulation, or evolved precedents in working systems, would be more convincing.
What would be most helpful in understanding Qubic would be if, like Bitcoin, the essential design decisions were documented in one reference doc. Also great would be some example narrative-transcripts/protocol-time-sequences of regular processes.