How can we prevent people from handing off this ref to various parts of the application. Do you feel that the only instance should be allowed to access the ref? There could be powerful use cases for allowing this first class ref to escape out to the entire system, but it also seems like a recipe for misuse/overuse. An API like:

    this.ref(this.innerRef).then(...)

Could ensure that you are only ever accessing a ref that you should be accessing.