They are required for 1 thing over everything else: To facilitate a high mining quota while supporting services (by decoupling the service layer from theb mining layer on-chain). The high mining quota is needed to store value, just as bitcoin does, using the capital transfer business model of POW.

The question then presents itself: "Why then torpedo your ability to absorb capital, having successfully liberated it from the service-layer priorities ?". Why not play the card you created for yourself ?

There are plenty of competitors that can do what Dash does if ALL we are going to do is be a functional service layer. There are NO competitors that can do both. So that's where the facepalm-factor lies.