Question: Has anybody tried to replace proof of work with social proof? Let every participant create their own fiat or scrip out of thin air. The different kind of scrips are not fungible with each other. Often scrip would be used like a voucher. You acquire it on the market and then return it to its emitter for goods and services. I can imagine digital companies or successful streamers to have their own scrip, but also local and national governments, or banks. If Joe normal emits their own scrip, well then it is at first worthless. Same as if you make your own shitcoin.
BUT the twist here would be that you can endow other scrip with your scrip's value. If you are a celebrity with a lot of value, you can put a little bit of your coins in the coins of, say, an environmentalist project you want to support. Suddenly their printed money can buy things they need.
In a way, it is the anti-bitcoin. Bitcoins are hard to generate, and the algorithm is strict with no room for negotiation. If somebody has a lot of coin but the majority doesn't like what they are doing with it, tough luck. Social scrip would be trivial to generate, and it's value is due to the services I provide to others, or the value transferred by others to my scrip, so a part of it is permanently up to negotiation.
Probably it is a crazy idea. I'm still thinking about how to make the "imbueing" work exactly while keeping the value stable (the current idea is some kind of page-rank algorithm). I'm also not sure how to incentivize people to keep the ledger running if there is no mining. But maybe somebody is already further along with this idea.