Too Long; Didn't Read
Proof-of-burn was originally proposed way back in 2012 by Iain Stewart, a year after proof of-stake and about a year before Vitalik Buterin first proposed the idea of a general purpose blockchain. The algorithm doesn’t just mitigate the Steem attack, it delivers greater decentralization than proof-of-work and greater efficiency than proof-of-stake, making it nothing less than the “holy grail” of consensus algorithms. The more demand there is for virtual miners, the longer the payback period becomes. If there is enough demand, the token supply will go down; deflation.