@garbados you need the proof-of-work to prevent someone from forging bitcoins. Otherwise you could just say you mined a buttcoin and nobody would be able to say otherwise.
But yes, blockchains(and more generally merkle trees) shouldn't be currencies, or more accurately commodities(since they're currently way too unstable to be currencies). They should be used for reliable distributed event/resource tracking, of which currency is a small and relatively shitty subset.
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@garbados I see no reason to believe that proof of work can't be efficient. If you're not trying to create a currency with necessarily smooth resource generation you can just make the difficulty constant.
But yes, for resource tracking outside of currency it would be best to use something like a Web of trust to verify resource generation (new resources and transactions signed by "miners" and you trust that the resource exists because you trust the person who signed it)