I've been assuming, and still assume, that although a hashcash scheme could solve the spam problem, and is arguably the easiest way to do it (despite some superficial, addressable challenges), it won't be solved that way. There are other feasible solutions which essentially have the advantage of not seeming so... strange and unlikely... to those who haven't studied the idea in depth, and in a world where who-gets-to-critical-mass-first usually determines what is and isn't adopted, such perceptions can be a killer blow.
I was interested to see this on Justin Mason's blog: "we do plan to add [hashcah] to SpamAssassin (eventually!)"
I followed a link to SpamAssassin's BugZilla bug 796, and one of their developers is planning to add it in the next major release. There is an active ongoing discussion in the comments section about how best to do it.
So that's a start toward hashcash possibly getting to critical mass. I still won't bet on it, for the reason mentioned above, but it does seem a bit more possible now.
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