Fundamentally speaking, if you are going to eliminate PoT and build the network irrespective and unconcerned with user base issues, why not just build a centralized network internally and then build it out through PoS terminals to vendors without ever involving any form of community in the actual running of the nodes? At that point all you would need is a strong web wallet with multi-sig, 3 factor auth on transfers, and added features such as a merchant directory and built in promotions, etc. You could focus the majority of your development around merchant outreach and the web wallet.
Sounds like a great idea to me. Why do you think this is bad?You still run into the same issue with early adoption. Merchants won't sign up if no one is there to spend it and users won't sign up if they get nothing in return. Chicken / Egg.
PoT forging does nothing to address vendor Chicken / Egg. Before the merchants show up, there's only "lottery winnings" to motivate a few forgers, not a stable system that rewards all forgers equally. Viral spread of a cool app for electronic payment via smartphone using purchased "tokens" called Cryptis does. Refocus from PoT to that app - it is what users will sign up for to download. Start spreading it in Africa - they already understand and use this technique because they don't have banks.