I'm not optimistic about getting rid of botnet (or botnets) because they can switch to new PoDC at some moment. Anyway they will contribute to cancer research and definitely this is the way to go for BBP.
Giving meaning to the coin (charity, orphans, cancer research, banking the unbanked) means adding highest value and a will for persistence, in a world where we will see hundreds of crapcoins wiped out sooner or later.
My thoughts in part echo the Dev.
First, we likely have or will have a significant botnet (50%+) without a change.
The reasons I think botnets will struggle with PoDC are:
It's tougher to setup. The prototypical botnet operation requires smaller programs that are easy to automate. PoBH fit that criteria. Adding BOINC to the mix, another level of registration (which could if there was a bot net operating, lead authorities to trace them easier, or for the coin to block them easier)
Small computers don't get the same boost with PoDC as they did with PoBh. With PoBH, you were better off running 20 wallets on 1 core, than 1 wallet on 20 cores (although that was not the intent, it was true for most of the time in practice). I've tested with my home system (Xeon X5650) and a VPS where I was allowed to use 100% of the CPU. The best VPS instance was about 1/15th the power of my home system, but by the CPU type it should have been about 1/8. This leads me to believe VPS won't be very effective on PoDC. And since a botnet is really at it's heart little different from a technical standpoint than a user with many VPS (but very different from a legal standpoint), I believe this will reduce the returns on botnets. Coupled with the increased work to maintain them and the risk of having to register them, I would be inclined to believe the botnet threat will be greatly reduced (although not eliminated).
On the positive side, now a botnet, if it stays with us, will at least give something back to society while they use their stolen hardware.
It is unfortunate that the change is coming with so little warning, but for once the exchanges were on the ball with the maintenance requests and the other option would be to delay PoDC while the exchange wallets were on maintenance, which would mean a longer wait for them to come back out of maintenance and that would not be good for the coin. Is it ideal? No but it is what we're facing and we can make the best of it.