This post by Chris de la Iglesia starts off very down on blockchains, but ends up not so down after all:

We are entering a new world with a new focus on giving users control over their data, their identity, and their systems. We are building distributed filesystems, distributed identity, and yes, blockchains. I think oftentimes we end up seeing only the blockchain technology due to the headlines and the financial investment, but distributed systems as a whole are taking off in a big, big way.