Merkle trees, yes! That was just an example of a technique that can be well hidden vs in the user's face.

Newer techniques like Verkle trees, SNARKs, STARKs, &c are.... well, new.

The way I see it, "blockchain" (NFTs, etc) are less technologies and more business-plans to make money--perhaps in a slightly more-literal sense than usual--from available tools.

It's kind of like ride-share services: They didn't invent cars or databases or dispatching systems or phone-apps, and while their investment might have spurred some new tools/libraries/algorithms, the usefulness of those inventions doesn't flow backward to mean they have a good/sustainable business.

There are even cases like "private blockchain" where the fad-marketing is getting used to mislabel what is actually just a regular old distributed database of yesteryear.

> They didn't invent cars

Can we really call the car an "invention"? After all, both the wheel and the steam engine already existed.

Those techniques were already invented and in-use long beforehand.