[75dvtwin]

I would agree that many use cases that imply a distributed ledger, do not need a proof-of-work.

Perhaps cryptocurrency still need it, but not many of the 'non-cryptocurrency' use cases.

My argument is centered around a following nuance:

If the use case allows to assume that 'originator' of a particular event is trusted, then the distribution of that event across multiple untrusted servers/access points, does not require a proof-of-work.

The example of how this works is explained in paper " Balloon: A Forward-Secure Append-Only Persistent Authenticated Data Structure

by Tobias Pulls and Roel Peeters

Abstract: We present Balloon, a forward-secure append-only persistent authenticated data structure. Balloon is designed for an initially trusted author that generates events to be stored in a data structure (the Balloon) kept by an untrusted server, and clients that query this server for events intended for them based on keys and snapshots.

" https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/007