Good points, I like the analogies. I would also not classify prions as life originators, but rather thinking if a similar model would have been employed by an intermmediate non-nucleotide based replicator. So basically chemical folders that would gradually evolve the replicator molecular complexity.
I think the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAH_world_hypothesis is somewhat similar to your idea. IIUC they don't self reproduce, they just grow in a random order in a pattern. And the proposal is that it 's good to support the RNA bases for a small time to make it easy to build small chains.
[I remember to have read something like that about clay or crystals, but I can't find it now in the article in Wikipedia. Perhaps the idea was abandoned a long time ago.]
