Building hybrid blockchain/cloud applications

Practically speaking, there are a number of other hurdles for implementing a perfect record keeping system, like accurately reconciling the record with reality.

What people really want is a record keeping system that’s hard to cheat. Blockchain technology makes certain types of cheating harder, but not others. So it’s not exactly what people want, but it looks like it’s a step in the right direction.

The problem that blockchains solve is centralization. In other words - google cloud computing.

To revisit your example: let's say you are ordering 5 widgets.

* A lookup on the Widget Market Blockchain tells you that vendor X has completed a large number of 5-star transactions, with a verified number of clients that have all sufficient 5 star transactions with the rest of the network to be considered genuine accounts, while vendor Y has a history of shipments that are reported as not arriving. You can examine each transaction, though automated verification tools are already in place to make cheating unprofitable. You can examine the code of those tools, along with the blockchain contracts themselves, should you so choose.

Or:

* Amazon's Widget product page shows the Amazon Choice item (neither the cheapest, nor most appropriate product), followed by a list of sponsored products. Many of the reviews are clearly fake, or appear to refer to a different product, with no way to verify that an actual transaction between genuine widget trading parties took place.

Now, of course the law isn't always just, it sucks that most countries ban drugs, it sucks that governments don't want anti-government activists to get donations, but the terrible things done with buttcoins vastly outnumber the non-terrible things.

Cryptocurrencies have largely fueled the rise of ransomware, extortion and scams.

People are literally burning energy on hash bruteforcing just so that scammers and malware authors could get paid.