[wesleyfsmith]

Yes, you are correct that the computational of running the smart contracts is very small in relation to the proof of work.

But actually, the main cost is not computation, but storage. Storage (any variable that is holding data inside the contracts) is extremely expensive because there is very little of it, and has to be persisted on the blockchain forever.

In fact, view functions that don't change the state of the blockchain can be executed for free at any time.

[Bayart]

Related to that, people have started using old procedural generation tricks to store "large" amounts of data on-chain. For example, as far as I understand it, Aavegotchi [1] stores base layer SVGs, metadata and functions to use these and render the actual end-product at view-time.

Blockchain constraints are eerily reminiscent of the demoscene [2][3][4] (just using the opportunity to share stuff I like, don't mind it).

[1]: https://github.com/aavegotchi/aavegotchi-contracts

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD1wWY1YD-M

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJegM2UgEZU

[4]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w_xEUoK79o

[SilasX]

This: If you don't have some noteworthy transaction cost, the network gets flooded with spam past its other scalability limits.

You can shrink it somewhat in absolute terms, but you need to throttle them somehow.