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@t.o.
I am open to being persuaded otherwise by people who have thought more about it than I have, but my initial thoughts are:
1) Users
Some users want anonymity. I would say most users do - for all the various reasons above, it promotes deeper discussion, it means your work cannot see exactly how much time you spend posting on internet forums, your boyfriend doesn't find out you've been posting in a relationship advice thread, etc etc.
I know that the point is you are trying to work out whether they do, but if your users want anonymity then you need to provide it!
2) making microcosm work as a business
Facebook, google, apple (?) require real ID, and are huge and permanent.
AFAIK there is no uniform underlying provider for the online services that are anonymous. Microcosm could become that. Maybe a good thing, maybe not - why are the big ones not anonymous?
Facebook etc. are advertising/marketing tools. I think that they miss the point that we are interesting to people selling things because we are consumers (i.e. people who like things and want to buy them [and talk about them, and work out which is best to buy/watch/eat/visit/etc]) - not because we are Real Person X, who is friends with Real Person Y.
I'm not explaining this very well.
I think that the real identity is probably not important to the people who will end up paying the bills and help make microcosm successful - people who advertise things. I am not sure that they agree though.
If you are a "socially conscious" brand selling things, then you might be happy to say to your customers "we get market info from XYZ system, which gives us deep, useful data on anonymous consumers".
Maybe.