I know this isn't the point of your post, but is blockchain all that new? Distributed ledgers already existed in the 90s, pretty close to your 30 year cutoff.
Just the fact that a blockchain doesn't scale in an obviously good way is probably part of what confused people into not inventing it sooner. Surely if total storage requirement increases without bound, it can't possibly run forever! Well, humanity won't run forever either. It just has to last long enough to be useful while it exists.