one must maintain a high hashrate to counter risks for 51%- or genesis attack.
pow is necessary to blockchains and proven to be most secure (yet). But maintaining it is (and has to be) costly and energy consuming.
Bitcoin allows for messages to be written into the blockchain with a so called OP code.
In the first Bitcoin block ever mined, Satoshi included this message:
03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks
komodo came up with the delayed proof of work consensus mechanism.
the hash of the komodo chain is stored in the bitcoin chain with a fixed interval.
komodo dPOW ignores the 'longest chain' rule, but looks at hashes in Bitcoin to verify the true chain.
if another chain then Bitcoin would be the most secure in the future, dPOW provides in switching to that within minutes.
in addition komodo allows people to create 'asset chains' which are full blockchains.
asset chains secure themselves with dPOW in komodo.
asset chains ignore the 'longest chain' rule as well and look at komodo to resolve conflicts.
asset chains can in theory switch to another chain then komodo, just like komodo can switch from bitcoin to another chain.