I'm thinking about a proof of work chain where coin is minted only by the difference in the increase of difficulty.

inflationary, yes. but only if difficulty increases.
Inflation is important to me because I think about fairness. Fairness of DAOs
When it's easy to lock coins in a smart contract for hundreds or 1000s of years, we can't rely on the "human element' to sell those coins on the market.
There's a difference in increase, but then also a difference in increase or decrease.
Including decrease would incentivize more to contribute to the network if significant amounts of the contributors were "killed" off.
I'm learning that hash rate and difficulty are not linearly correlated. Which one represent energy put towards the system?
I'm asking all of this because I have a DAO protocol that I believe is very strong for layer 2. but only if layer 1 is inflationary.
I believe that perfecting decentralization of the network requires perpetual growth. That eventually means going beyond this planet.
I really like Ethereum classic. but it's max supply monetary policy is not ideal for decentralization of DAOs.