I see what you mean. I think the key difference lies in the purpose. The sheer force of PoW mining is there to project power to maintain and defend people's money. It's the only way we know, if you want to avoid reinventing the kleptocratic fiat ponzi.

A software bounty is to design and add new functionality to software. Or create new software, but cooperate.

Bitcoin without the fierce competition typically dies, as we've seen with all its ill variants.

Zig folks are saying the "throw money at the problem" approach creates negative incentives. I can see that.

Such dynamics in a software project may be akin to high time preference and causing bitrot, but for Bitcoin it's doing a good job.

What do you think?