Fully agree with you! The Apocryph network utilizes PoW for key mining - it's a new kind of algorithm where the nodes are required to sign the block with private keys that have specific prefix, similar to what Vanitygen does.

We were considering to reward the validators only with the transaction fees, but some part of the token can be also mined together with the blocks. It can continue forever or stop at one point and thus the early validators will be better incentivised. Another option will be to have a testnet and then reward its miners on the mainnet's genesis block, but not continue with the mining rewards on the mainnet. What do you think - which one of these options would you prefer to see? My concern with continues mining awards is that they create inflation.