Yes, that's the "work". The value of that work is as part of a mechanism for enforcing consensus. To the question "does entropy tell us anything about the large

Yes, that's the "work". The value of that work is as part of a mechanism for enforcing consensus. To the question "does entropy tell us anything about the larger system" I am arguing that it does not (in any non-trivial way). Obviously entropy is related to any computation we perform. It's just not going to give us any special insight into cryptocurrencies to point that out.