All the good bits of blockchain, we already had in git: a transaction ledger with hashes for tamper-proofing. Git came out in 2005, based on work going back a few decades.

What we're seeing in practice is a lot of "Blockchain(tm)" products that are just this, and not actually a blockchain. Remember how Estonia has blockchains in everything and talks them up at every opportunity? Their local "KSI Blockchain" is just a ledger with hashes. https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2017/09/06/estonias-sma...

The Bitcoin-style decentralisation etc is not in practice useful for real things that aren't cryptocurrencies.

Transaction ledgers with hashes are great stuff! So if they get used more, that'll be the good outcome of "Blockchain(tm)" hype. But this article is just full of what are literally Bitcoin hyperbolic claims, with the buzzword changed.

This IEEE Spectrum "blockchain" issue has been consistently glib and lacking in detail. I'm very disappointed. This is supposed to be a magazine from an institute for engineers.