It requires a bunch of browser features that non-user browsers don’t have, and the proof-of-work part is like the least relevant piece in this that only gets invoked once a week or so to generate a unique cookie.

I sometimes have the feeling that as soon as some crypto-currency related features are mentioned people shut off part of their brain. Either because they hate crypto-currencies or because crypto-currency scammers have trained them to only look at some technical implementation details and fail to see the larger picture that they are being scammed.