The confirmation times are sped up by the fact that most blocks only require low POW (and the minters can be preparing their difficult POW between the block where the information is sourced from and the block their POW tx needs to appear by).
Understood. Presumably you're compensating the miners for their difficulty PoW, though?
That is what I haven't decided upon yet (but in reality it is likely to be necessary to at least have some reward).
IMO it is essential for a couple of reasons:
1. Without a competition to mine, the maximum hash rate of the network is unknown, which means confirmation cannot easily be bounded as adversaries may lie in wait instead of using their power 'for good'
2. With no incentive to behave in favour of the network as a whole, rational behaviour may cause divergence