We are seeing masternodes as a good alternative to mining. Energy efficient and quicker.
Most of the successful newer coins are masternode based and very few mineable coins.
Casper, POS or whatever name they might give, ETH too seems to be moving towards a completely masternode transaction.
So, is the masternode future of cryptocurrency?
Masternodes is not something new they've been around, there are crypto such as dash for instance that use it. With them you are putting some sort of centralziation between the network, however this is far better than systems like DPOS. We are yet at the begining on this maybe blockchain will be shifted to more sufficient structure such as tangle from IOTA where you don't have the need for master nodes. The problem with ETH is that they want to reward the people who run the nodes and ultimetly make the protocol more efficient in terms of electrical usage.