Now that has been proven and I am waiting for something better. I have been looking into PoS and maybe NEM PoI, but listening to AnonyMint's suggestion that also seems really interesting. Basically, if lots and lots of uses were miners, that any time a wallet was open it was mining, then the network could be supported. His solution makes a lot of sense.
And what would keep them from creating a wallet that saved electricity by not mining? And how do you prevent someone from writing a malicious wallet when all the others have adopted the cheaper non-miner that they can run on their phones?
People are stuck on the question of value, and come to the conclusion that value is derived from expenditure of resources. But that's simply not the case. Value is derived from utility. In other words, the question of value is related to usefulness, not expenditure.
Expenditure is required to help ensure honesty. If a reward requires resources, but cheating jeopardizes the reward, then the incentive is to be honest when expending those resources. That's the PoW model. This model has absolutely nothing to do with imparting value on a commodity. The utility of the commodity takes care of the value.