'Blockchain' isn't a meaningless buzzword, it's a database protocol. Its market positioning aside, there's a very real value that immutable databases offer from both a technological and a commercial perspective.

The blockchain protocol isn't going to 'save the world' - but once a little air gets let out of the balloon, it's going to see a lot of adoption in both financial institutions and back offices in a wide, wide, range of industries. For a world with lots of data and lots of shady actors, it just makes sense.

I agree they make sense for some interbank and business transactions where you have counterparty risk, and it looks like several banks are interested in developing their own ledger with the Linux Foundation - https://www.hyperledger.org/.

But I wonder what would drive mass adoption for every day users - aside from a collapse of the current financial system.

For general public it doesn't really matter if AirBnb or Uber or Whatsapp are decentralised or not - we use them because they have reached a point through network effects where they have a ton of users/liquidity, are reliable and have smooth UX.

Also, I'm not sure storage issues are a solved problem for immutable decentralised databases.

Fast global microtransactions could be a useful consumer app but so far there is little need for those. And the UX for fiat->crypto->fiat transactions and wallets is far from what it needs to be for general public.

Blockchains won't save the world all on their own, but developers who believe our world is in peril because of avoidable issues of economic and social organization should definitely try to use blockchains to save the world. Blockchains are the raw material of social coordination. They can absolutely be used to solve social problems.

Overzealousness is unfashionable. Be unfashionable until you're convinced that you're actually wrong.

I agree that "blockchain" is essentially a database protocol for a special kind of database, but I'm fairly sure there's no standard, agreed-upon, single "blockchain protocol."

Bitcoin may be the best-known blockchain protocol, but there many others in active use.

IpPFS

You're entirely missing the point. Proof of work was old hat long before the bitcoin whitepaper was published. Bitcoin's innovation is using compounded proof of work to form a trustless immutable distributed database. Blockchain is the name of this particular data structure, not a buzzword.