Proof-of-Work is still a great investment, that offers better ROI (return on investment) than staking.

Let me first state that, staking is still vastly superior than simply keeping your money in a bank.

Alright so let's start with two projects that offer staking as a control. We will use Algorand (ALGO) and Polygon (MATIC).

Algorand APY = 5.5% Polygon APY = 13.67%

So what can a $10,000 USD investment get you? At current prices you're looking at roughly 9,803 ALGO and 6944 MATIC. If you use their projected APY figures you'll earn 539 ALGO per year, or roughly 1.48 per day, an equivalent USD value of $1.50/day, $45/month.

With MATIC, you will earn 949 MATIC per year, or 2.6 MATIC per day, and equivalent USD value of $3.75/day, $112/month. Mind you this is still 55x and 137x better respectively than the interest on your average bank account.

But what could you do with a $4,500 investment into a Proof-of-Work setup? Well you could build a mining rig with 8 x 1070ti. (Which go for around $425ea on the resale market.). You could build a mining rig which will earn you the following AFTER ELECTRICITY COST (calculated at a cost of $0.14/KwH at 1120 watts)

• Ethereum: 0.0053 Ethereum or $12.95/day, $388/month
• Ravencoin: 120.7 Ravencoin or $11.75/day, $352/minth
• Ergo: 0.631 Ergo or $7.45/day, $223/month.

(Reminder this is income after electricity costs, you will earn more.)

This puts your APY% on a $4,500 at the following:

• ETH: Yearly Earnings: $4,726, APY = 105%
• RVN: Yearly Earnings: $4,288, APY = 95%
• ERGO: Yearly Earnings: $2,719, APY = 60%

So what If energy consumption is your concern? It's a well known fact that PoS uses very little power compared to PoW. So how much would it cost to build a solar system that could offset the consumption/cost of running that 1070ti rig 24/7. And would it still be worth it?

Running a 1,120watt machine 24 hours/day will use around 26.88kWh of power per day. At a cost of $0.14kWh, that's a price of $3.76 to run per day. (We have already taken this out of our profits). So how expensive and big of a solar system would you need to offset almost 27kWh a day?

Assuming you can get at least 5 solar hours per day, you would need a system capable of producing 7.17kW. A 8.5kW system through Tesla (one of the cheapest solar providers) will run you around $17,000 (BEFORE INCENTIVES). If you add a 2.5% annual interest rate to the solar loan and divide that into a 20-year loan you're looking at payments of around $90/month. This means you'll actually be spending LESS money to run you your rig and effectively increasing your APY% as you will be going down from $112/month to run your rig to $90/month. At an electricity cost of $0.11/kWh you'll be paying roughly the same. It's also not common knowledge that most solar companies do not require money down out of your pocket, there is very little reason to not go solar in 2022, especially with an over 20% federal incentive.

Source: I run two rigs off solar, for no cost above the solar loan. Am well on the way to making back my entire investment.