I once had an idea for a (weird) different hybrid asic-gpu PoW scheme where instead of trying to eliminate the energy consumption (at least half by incentive anyways) instead direct it at meaningful work like crunching or folding for science or medicine or whatever. Its tricky because its (maybe) somewhat detrimental to network security because incentive for asics development (the validators) would be halved again (but if history serves then it won’t matter)and gpus would need paid out out in some seperate manner because they’re offchain (I was thinking some kind of one-way, timelock atomic token thing where its either redeemable or minted, hence the timelock, maybe they could stake it too while its over off mainchain idk) . The idea is that no matter how much power asics consume, a problem you cannot solve without forking, there would still be an equal and similiar styled (i.e. earnin Zcash by mining data) monetary incentive to do work that potentially has tremendous benefits for everyone (or many more people at least than just transactor). Or something similiar anyways