> the process was a lot slower than shipping an update to a blockchain network
The process of creating a system for private, energy efficient smart contract transactions took 12 years. To make them scalable and foolproof for the general public will likely take another 5-10 years.
Blockchain updates are less like the process of laying physical cable, more like the process of building up a very large piece of software with lots of moving parts, like an operating system. They both require a lot of effort, but with laying cables the effort is physical and legal whereas with operating systems (and blockchain platforms) the effort is heady and research-oriented.
We've seen that shipping an update to a blockchain network can be extremely slow indeed, if that update requires a lot of R&D.
That said, even if you want to ignore Bitcoin, things like Ethereum still are lagging far behind — if that network shut off tomorrow, nobody not involved in selling tokens would notice. The same would not have been true of the web 7 years, or even 2 years, after it launched because tons of people were using it for things unrelated to selling web services.
It's certainly possible that at some point some level of functionality will make it more attractive but I suspect that this will involve rolling back parts of the current sales pitch and that will unfavorably affect the cost relative to other models like distributed ledgers or standard APIs.