It’s not just to reduce spam, though that helps. Bitcoin provides absolute ordering. Outputs inside transactions inside blocks, all in exact sequence. This allows indexers to verify who claimed a name. POW doesn’t provide any kind of ordering guarantee

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If two notes were confirmed in the same block for the same new id via OTS then PoW used to reduce spam maybe the same PoW nonce could also be used to break ties? But i do see how using position in a block as being simpler.