I have no faith in "blockchain" as a component of a distributed system. Specifically: any system where mutations are guarded behind some thing of value as a con

I have no faith in "blockchain" as a component of a distributed system. Specifically: any system where mutations are guarded behind some thing of value as a consensus mechanism will trend towards centralization. (Hash chains are perfectly fine otherwise.) PoW is not a distributed system in the slightest. The moment someone creates an accelerator for it, it's done. The set of people who can meaningfully interact with the system as a distributed system shrinks to the very small set of people willing to spend loads of money on ASICs; and the far larger set of people with CPUs is entirely crowded out. "One CPU, one vote" becomes "one ASIC, one million votes". PoS is at least less of an environmental catastrophe, but it now explicitly involves capital. And here's the problem: capital is inherently centralizing. The idea that we can decentralize or distribute capitalism is absurd, because that's not how economies of scale work. Hell, the original distributed system, free markets, have been routinely subverted time and time again to the interests of those who already have capital in those markets. I know of no other proof-of system other than work and stake; and both are hilariously inadequate for their intended use cases.