"...you're competing vs. centralized entities, which can offer better liquidity more efficiently, which leaves the decentralized pool high and dry."
A while back Hashgraph made a stir, claiming that enabling nodes to share information with each other dramatically increased speed of validation. They called it gossip, and went further, enabling gossip about gossip. I was very intrigued and there was plenty of interest in Hashgraph at the time, but I haven't heard much since. Seems that mechanism of validation would indeed vastly outperform sequential polling and linear block production.
I'm curious if that's a mechanism you've had a look at and found wanting, or if there's another reason I haven't heard much about it for a while.
Thanks!