> I’ve heard about governments considering using blockchain based tech to thwart internal corruption (immutable public records FTW).

During my time in government, shady contractors pitching blockchain to solve literally every problem was so common and so preposterous that it quickly became a meme. "Immuatble public records" was a common claim, but "blockchain" isn't fundamentally different from a git repository in this regard.

If all you need is a replicated merkle tree, we have easier and more efficient ways of doing that.