No reason to pay $70,000 to somebody for a similar idea.
Agree.
It's definitely doable (assuming their math checks out).
What I can gather so far is they base it on a zero-knowledge proof - some mathematical magic that allows you to prove that you own a secret
in multiple ways, thus decoupling one check from another.
So you mint an off-chain coin and then spend it again, this time revealing the secret, so there are no double spends.
It's like having a special challenge-response chip. No point in saving challenge or response and no way of linking several challenge/responses to your chip. Once you spend it, the "chip" is destroyed.
I am pretty sure their paper was peer reviewed, university profs did the paper
Ian Miers, Christina Garman, Matthew Green, Aviel D. Rubin
The Johns Hopkins University Department of Computer Science, Baltimore,