Thank you also @mingweiw for your reply! Though I have not replied I have come back to your text a few times and I think you have a correct intuition in several parts. There is likely a pretty big design space to
a. write commitments
b. verify commitments
c. process conditional payments.
For a), a DAG of dependencies may be the correct data structure/language. For b), SNARKs would be a good option if available, but you can also have attesters validate the commitment with e.g., commitment-gas or something. For c), the hope is that EVM transactions combined with a clever use of templating/evaluation of commitments allows for such things. Once you have all three I believe it is generic enough to think about any kind of reward/penalty scheme.