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All "block chain" is is a Merkle tree. You can do all sorts of productive, interesting stuff with Merkle trees.

If you want to do interesting things with a trust-less, decentralized system, you need the mining and mining rewards.

It's more of a linked-list of Merkle trees.

There are a few file sharing applications that do interesting things with trust-less, decentralized systems, without any sort of mining or mining rewards.

Mining allows for high value transactions in a low trust environment, but lower value transactions are very possible without that.

IMO Tit for Tat is a much more interesting form of consensus building as it can be very low resource. But it's really all about the goals not the protocol.

Were any of these trials interesting enough to be attacked?

>education, healthcare, energy

I'm not asking for dissertations but could someone briefly explain how any of these problems/industries will be effected by blockchain.

Hype, Consultants, Buzzwords baffling executives