We don’t accept that ZEC is only a store of value, no. ZEC payments are very much a critical part of the strategy, at least for Zcash Open Development Lab as I understand it. ZODLing is complementary to payments and in fact necessary for payment privacy.
I’m supportive of Proof-of-Stake, but not for that reason. I’m supportive because I think it can provide better consensus security and, in the long term, a path to lower consensus energy usage — which is important for environmental (and environmental regulation) reasons.
Note that prices can be denominated in a long-term stable asset (by whatever metric) regardless of the actual asset transferred. If asset swaps are easy on either side, then it is only necessary to agree on the exchange rate, and for the asset transferred to be stable enough in the short term that price movements don’t significantly disadvantage either side of the payment.
I think this will become a very common pattern: prices denominated in whatever the parties are comfortable with, but paid in ZEC.