To be honest I was surprised that developers are not inclined to make Helium a Dash clone. Instead it is now PIVX so how would development affects further the launch of HLM ? Pushed even further in my opinion.
as i now the community decided to change it, from Dash clone become PIVX
and you can read the full story about this here
https://www.heliumlabs.org/blog/mar-20th-ledgercodeteamregards
Well, not the community, but the handful of people that hang in the slack channel.
Personally I'd loved to use my D3s, but I'm very ambivalent about both ways.
1. X11
Pros: Mining (it means gaining more popularity, fast)
Cons: Mining (a lot of power consumption - see BTC power consumption for past year:
https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption)
2. PIVX
Pros: POS means lower power footprint, and IF HLM gets the same popularity will not be so energy wasteful.
Cons: I highly doubt HLM will gain the same popularity without mining.
The above doesn't include any technical aspect, but we all know a product doesn't have to be perfect to be publicly accepted. That being said, PIVX might be way better, but that doesn't matter if only handful of people admire the project and can't get enough users (miners and traders included) to be involved.
So personally I got into mining for the money even though I admire crypto's ideology - decentralization and independence. Still power consumption is going awry and with these temps it will be very soon when mining is being denied/limited/prohibited because it's sucking too much juice (it already started in WA and QC).
Bottom line - I keep my fingers crossed and I hope I am wrong about the negative effect of cutting off POW.
P.S. - Now BTC's world power consumption share is 0.27%. I am afraid at some point (when it reaches double digits?!) miners will be as powerful as oil tycoons and drug cartels put together and lobbying for their interests.