Am I correct to assume that this is Bargaining stage of grief?
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
e.g. one can be amazed by nuclear physics yet dislike nuclear weapons. Or appreciate chemistry by hate meth cooks.
This reads more like a shallow shill-piece for the people in the article. It's odd to see it at IEEE.
None of the presented angles would work for something like Bitcoin. Without another native currency, how do you assign value or determine usefulness of, say, models? No matter how you slice it, if you're going to make it into a viable PoW-replacement you will need some kind of fundamental theoretical breakthrough that none of these have. TEEs are definitely not it. The status quo is otherwise that it is an intractable proposal (which other commentors have covered already)
I have a feeling that the author doesn't fully understand what they're writing about and are acting as a useful idiot so some guys can get free PR.
Did you buy the top or something?
It gets hyped, it falters, people stop talking for a while, and the cycle repeats itself.
If not, then maybe just step back and observe the chain grow block by block, day by day, unfettered, for the rest of your life.