Sirer is either disingenuous or quoted entirely out of context. I'm leaning more towards the latter.
This reads more like a shallow shill-piece for the people in the article. It's odd to see it at IEEE.
None of the presented angles would work for something like Bitcoin. Without another native currency, how do you assign value or determine usefulness of, say, models? No matter how you slice it, if you're going to make it into a viable PoW-replacement you will need some kind of fundamental theoretical breakthrough that none of these have. TEEs are definitely not it. The status quo is otherwise that it is an intractable proposal (which other commentors have covered already)
I have a feeling that the author doesn't fully understand what they're writing about and are acting as a useful idiot so some guys can get free PR.
It's a piece about the energy usage of cryptocurrencies, possible solutions as well as potential problems with those solutions. What does the bargaining stage of grief have to do with it?
So blockchains aren't fundamentally decentralized, permissionless, censorship resistant networks, and you've found a secret issue that will cause an unraveling of the protocol?
If not, then maybe just step back and observe the chain grow block by block, day by day, unfettered, for the rest of your life.
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html