It would be nice to see some sort of casual hawala-type federated micropayments system based on real national currency, with instant settlement, low fees, and no fake money value store. But, that would be a pre-9/11 idea. Nowadays that's basically illegal and useless.
Paypal is more or less good enough, and hopefully regulators and market forces will control the fees and abuses.
Thats the vision- a somalia like decline, but society moves on, with schools back uped to youtube, with contracts backed up to the block chain, with the currency back uped to bitcoin. I find the ideals of crypto-anarchy laughable (those guys would be gunned down on the first corner, in a real anarchic world), and yet, i can agree to the path we taken. Cellphones and facebook, to have a culture of shame, that fights wild mobs and public hysteria, because the internet does not forget your lowest point. Anyone in power in fear of getting caught in public, for the world to see as just another corrupt, well fed monkey?
Yes, that is something to work towards.
And in this Somalia 2.0 future of yours, how will the computers and networks be powered?
This space doesn't atract incompetence, it atracts everyone. When you have tech thats so transparent and accessible, degrees and diplomas don't get to decide who can or cannot work on it. Plus, the world most experience blockchain developer has at most, 9 years of experience. That's not a lot of time to work out the kinks.
The Ethereum developers sold a vision of smart contracts, where the code is the contract. However, their hubris lead to them attempting to implement a complex language, instead of starting the endeavor with a small, simple, verifiable language. Similarly, their belief in their own infallibility lead them to write code that is not tested, and to create capabilities that are literally untestable.
This was bound to result in multiple massive failures. The dao was one. This is another. There will be more, because it's an overly complex implementation.
It doesn't matter, though. Only dumb-fuck crypto futurist suckers have ether exposure, so it won't matter that they get zero'd out once a competent team enters the space. That said, the space attracts incompetence like lights attract moths, so it'll take a while to find a team that is technically competent and also has the marketing chops to get traction.