For example for Monero, I read that the guy who optimized the hash algorithm, first mined $150,000 of XMR for himself
To be fair that was a bit of a special case, as the code was deliberately deoptimized and obfuscated, then taken over by a group that wasn't familiar with it at all (and had many different aspects of the code to be concerned with, not just PoW), and then became popular and skyrocketed in value quickly.
Removing any of these elements would have made the windfall much smaller. Certainly removing the deliberate deoptimization and obfuscation should be easy.
Anyway, I'm not sure that changes any of your conclusions, but generalizing from Monero is likely wrong as it was a special case.
If I remember correctly the person who did that work (
whom I remember well since he and I got in a heated argument about some technicalities because I at the time was working on a similar sort of hash before I developed the latter one based on a NIST candidate) was generally praised and appreciated by the community for fixing a problem that had the potential to cause much more harm. So I concur with your clarification. I suppose his profit was viewed as fair by the community.
I would prefer to avoid the potential problem entirely by not putting so much pressure at the launch on needing the hash to be perfectly and fairly optimized at launch. And especially with entirely new hash again (well based on a NIST candidate, yet never widely deployed afaik). Fully optimizing the assembly language of the hash is another burden that would slow me down towards launch. I did write down the assembly code for Intel and AMD 64-bit, but there are so many hardware variants, GPUs, etc..
Also I think it is helpful (and in defense of Monero) to point out the conditions under which Monero was formed. It was basically an adhoc rescue of a great technology which was being destroyed by those who created it. The community reacted in a necessary haste to try to wrestle the technology away to save it. So there wasn't the opportunity for planning it out in some other way. Doing a fair distribution via mining was the probably the only possible fair reaction that was workable in that situation, especially given there was no opportunity for exclusivity for any period of time (as numerous clones had already popped up).
Edit: link to thread about Cryptonote's storied history:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1136638.msg11986713#msg11986713And another concise summary:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1148913.msg12103449#msg12103449