Today I’m thinking that the best way forward - complexity and cost aside - would be to have hybrid PoW that could also support proof of stake later. So, slowly dial up the block reward to eg randomX, ethash, equihash with other parameters, etc. Slowly so that equihash ASICs wouldnt be jolted and there wouldnt be a hard cutover that could be exploited. Maybe this is too much work and unrealistic.
BUT, I think the consensus and the block reward should be adjusted to make it much more widely distributed.
If 650k ZEC are going to be emitted then in theory 650,000 people could participate and earn 1 ZEC. If I can hash on decent computer for a few weeks and earn 0.01 ZEC, of course this doesn’t look good at $0.20. But, current USD price is not the right framing. If I could hash for a few weeks and earn 0.01 BTC, $600, it looks pretty good. Remember how Zcash is like Bitcoin but way better? If we had 6.5 million people hashing their butts off to earn 0.1 ZEC each, i think that’s a much more valuable ZEC than 10 miners earning 65,000 ZEC each. In the mining farm scenario, they see the ZEC as ~50 BTC or $2 million or whatever. In the widely distributed, small miner scenario, the cost is small and the reward is small but the ZEC is valuable in itself - not because of its current liquidation value.
Long story short, the current consensus and block reward distribution is the worst part of Zcash right now. Whatever can be done to improve it should be done (carefully and thoughtfully).
