not sure if that was the point or not, but it's wrong. even if you did sign/encrypt, that's not a benefit over a standard cookie. you can easily sign or encrypt a 'standard cookie' as well.
the benefit is the portability that comes from a standardized and widely used data structure.
My point was that allowing 'None' was/is a flaw. If you want to shuttle bits of data about in an unsigned/unencrypted/insecure way, that's what raw cookies are for.
Now, as cookies are buckets to dump data, there is of course nothing to stop you encrypting, signing and doing all sorts of things to cookies.
the benefit is the portability that comes from a standardized and widely used data structure.