All good points.  Things have certainly changed, and the changes continue to accelerate.  Now there really is no need for POW on the BWK chain, but as you said, miners played a major role just a few short years ago and they still do today for many coins.

I see another unintended fork as highly likely as long as POW remains.  Especially with the superior hardware we see hitting the blockchains today.  People are fooling themselves if they believe that fpga isn't going to adapt to whatever algo the devs choose.  Once this happens, we're back in the same boat with superior hardware concentrating the hash power and forking the coin.

There's really no upside to continuing POW. Only downsides, lower prices, and malicious or unintended forks.