I disagree. Making proof of work involve real applications rather than just cryptography means that machines will need to be general. It isn't possible to build an ASIC capable of running ordinary applications.
Bitcoin is entirely owned by people with ASICs. The barriers to entry are enormous. It's totally pointless for me to mine Bitcoin on my laptop, or even on my Beowulf cluster. But if mining involves normal computations like you'd want to run on a normal cloud, then a laptop is capable of doing useful work and the barrier to entry is low.
Making normal computers useful is a huge improvement over Bitcoin and is the motivvation behind currencies like Monero.
Bitcoin is entirely owned by people with ASICs. The barriers to entry are enormous. It's totally pointless for me to mine Bitcoin on my laptop, or even on my Beowulf cluster. But if mining involves normal computations like you'd want to run on a normal cloud, then a laptop is capable of doing useful work and the barrier to entry is low.
Making normal computers useful is a huge improvement over Bitcoin and is the motivvation behind currencies like Monero.