You don't see that most proof-of-stake still requires a tremendous amount of energy and resources wasted at the very least for the stupid mining process?
I thought this when I first learned about the idea, but the name doesn't give away the true nature of, at least, most implementations... It's like 'mining requires less energy', and not that the tokens aren't mined at all.
Of course, theoretically you could've an initial distribution defined and shared without effort, but what really happens is a points system that makes it easier for people to... uh... mine, but it's obviously still the same awful idea.
Smart contracts should really be called "dumb contracts", as they're strictly dumber than traditional, old-school contracts.
Here's something worth pondering: what happens if you trigger a bug in a smart contract? What options do you have to fix or undo it?
Smart contracts are all bug-ridden by definition - formally codifying intent is a General-AI-complete problem, and since we are nowhere near close to making a human-level AI, it follows that a smart contract is just a crude approximation of the most obvious aspects of what you actually meant it to represent (no different than any other program here). Traditional contracts are smart enough to not even try - they don't codify intent, they just help achieve mutual understanding and pin down shared context for further reference. Interpretation, execution and debugging are all left to the general framework of common sense, tradition, regulations and accumulated case law.
When I can use a major chain and execute a smart contract for <$1 (on say a $100 contract) I'll be reasonably stoked. How are people playing with these when the fees are so high?
A lot of liquidity is moving to L2 Ethereum already and you can definitely execute smart contracts there for way less than $1 (e.g. on Polygon).
As for why people are willing to pay high gas fees on L1 - have you considered the possibility that the opportunities and value that they're getting out of it are worth the cost?
