The more complex is the math, the more opportunities to screw up, or should we say, optimizations.

VDFs are far too new, at best bleeding edge research, nobody is going to gamble serious money on the robustness of such new constructions.

You would need unanimous agreement from the entire cryptology field.

However, yes, there are some workshops on quantum and implications for mining, and some other fanciful stuff that are also just research at this point.

The current setup of PoW relies on rather well understood, battle hardened primitives, that have been in actual usage under adversarial conditions for decades.

Do you think any major central bank will hold any asset that's secured by a paper written last year?