Ex miner here (grasberg, Indonesia) - yes, we all had smartphones, at all times, and yes, we rarely had signal but if you went up to the surface / anywhere with signal, you would want your phone, so we all carried them.
Actually I think their wild ideas are contributing to this discussion.. I think your apparent hurt at this suggestion is a bit silly tbh.
Hear me out. I hadn't heard of the prior work you are raging about. But I am interested in decentralised tech - so, by this person mentioning their idea it got me interested to read further. Then you entered and went a bit madlad on them.. I'm not sure why when you could have just said "good question, here is everything we know about the effort to do exactly this" and then maybe that hacker would have been inspired to go read and maybe contribute.
Just my 2 cents ;-)