Hi @carsten,
I understand the use case, but there is a required randomness to the encryption scheme that results in different stored data, even for the same data input, so any new local file will have that randomness applied to it.
Any local addition on top of a placeholder will result in a new file uploaded to the cloud. You are correct that, since the properties of this file are now different in the remote storage, any other clients will see this as a change and download the file, as well. <-- @Ethan This is something I overlooked in my previous posts, so please be aware. Uploading data will actually result in more overhead because of the resulting downloads on other clients.
This means there really is no shortcut to populating local data of an Encrypted folder. It currently needs to be pulled in from the authoritative source (the remote storage).
I will pass this to the product team to see what other options could be possible for this use case.