You simply cannot replicate 10 years of PoW distribution.
That's 10 years of ZEC being accumulated by die hard believers in encryption, when few people cared about it.
You can't just copy that social layer, it took a decade to build.
Zcash gets priced on what it prevents: surveillance.
As surveillance becomes the default everywhere, blocking it becomes more and more valuable.
And there is no alternative: gold is cumbersome/physical, BTC isn't private, Monero is flawed, etc.
Zcash is the only solution.