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Notes -
This is part of it: existing proof of work is absurdly inefficient compared to a trusted database. Even proof-of-stake is still much more complex if a trusted party exists.
But I'd also point out that blockchain-related attempts to create their own governance have been doomed to slowly recreate much of the existing governance stack. There are already instances of "code is law" being worked around because software developers can find the same sort of loopholes that lawyers are famous for. I'm not going to say it's completely insurmountable, but it seems quite likely that these sorts of issues will continue, requiring the creation of a legal apparatus that looks a lot like a centralized court.
Many of the interesting use cases for "blockchain" (much of the traceability) really depend on Merkle trees that are ubiquitous in cryptocurrencies. Merkle trees are really useful, but don't strictly require the expensive distributed proofs in many interesting cases.
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