..?
I mean, how thin is "too thin"? 1-2mm at the foible is absolutely enough (in my experience, at least) for cleaving through meat and thinner bones without bending... and if you do a little calculation, you'll see that most european cutting blades (sorry for always using them as examples) have a thickness at about that at the foible, even as they were needed to face rigid plate defense. After all, why would it be called "foible"?
Balance: I didn't have a chance to wield one so far, but I don't think that it'd have a worse balance than my training swords... 50cm from the quillon for a 110cm "blade", overall weight being 12 kg... It strenghtens the wrist quite well... after that, anything lighter or better balanced will feel like feathers. And I think that a more forward balance point will do better for slashes, just as in the case of machetes.
When I was practising in a gladiator school as a dimacheris (two-sworder), I used almost exactly the same blade shape, with forward balance... They were good for me.
Pommel: A question has arised in me. Isn't it possible that they used the same "thumb grip" as the europeans? I mean, there are a few cuts (zwerchau and krumphau) where you "turn" the hilt with 90° in your hands, so the long edge is to the left, while the short is to the right.
In the case of yataghans, it would place the point to the "outside" and the edge to the "inside".
The question came from the posted picture. It looks like that the hilt is wider in the "wrong" direction... so it would be comfortable if you grip it in the thumb grip... so with extended arms the blade would be paralell to the ground. This way, you could use it either for cutting or thursting... try doing a few zwerchauen with it... it would make descending cuts more difficult, but not impossible, while making ascending cuts easier and faster, and making it possible to use the zwerch, which can instantly stop a descending cut while killing the opponent...
And you could use it for bashing thrusts aside. Imagine a low or central straight thrust coming towards you for sake of simplicity. If you make a wipe with the blade, you'll have the point at about the groin of the attacker. A little upward wrist move... Btw, this is almost the krumphau. And you can take out most strikes with it.
Sorry for the long post, I could tell you the same in about 2-3 sentences in my native language... If you can't understand, I can shot a few videos showing my idea. Or if I'm talking absolute idiotisms, or something that is well-known already, tell me, and shoot me down.
