The entire value of HN is that it’s owned, guided and actively moderated by YC.

An Ethereum-based alternative would lose that aspect while also costing money and being very slow. I can’t imagine paying for what is effectively negative value.

The test for blockchain “dApps” is this: is someone so desperate to have thing X decentralized that they’ll pay for it in both real money and usability inconvenience? If so, it’s a dApp candidate.

In the real world, the only thing that seems to pass this test is some types of inter-company ledgers.