Even if all PoW energy came from renewable sources, it's extremely wasteful and I'm sure we could have used that energy on something more productive.
That's not to say the allocation mechanism in PoW isn't interesting, but that's not really good enough in itself.
I've been experimenting with energy limited PoW, something called NuPoW [1], that reduces the reward if too much energy is collectively used. But this only works if you outsource the security to an underlying chain.
I think the wrapped BTCs, especially the decentralized approaches to it, are clever links that allow for the transfer of BTC value over to the Ethereum ecosystem.
It's a way of selling BTC for other tokens, extracting and removing its value over time, and instead investing it into DeFi and similar.
This is very technical, most likely way past what 99% of developers both need to care about and have to care about.
Given that most developers work at best with embarrassingly parallel problems they wouldn't need to know much of these details.
But if you're up for it: It's a very rewarding feeling when you're both allowed to figure these things out and someone are also paying you while you figure it out.
That's not to say the allocation mechanism in PoW isn't interesting, but that's not really good enough in itself.
I've been experimenting with energy limited PoW, something called NuPoW [1], that reduces the reward if too much energy is collectively used. But this only works if you outsource the security to an underlying chain.
[1] https://nupow.fi/whitepaper/