It comes down to trust and funding. Distributed ledgers, blockchains, smart contracts seem like the only way to operate certain schemes that would typically tak

It comes down to trust and funding. Distributed ledgers, blockchains, smart contracts seem like the only way to operate certain schemes that would typically take a government or other authority to implement in a way that provided parties guarantees about its fairness. The other aspect is that funding for some projects are not going to be achievable through traditional means because the profits from the network are too diffuse and are not concentrated in a single company's share holders. One such scheme is SONM, a soon-to-be network of computers that act like AWS, but in the fog. The network pays suppliers and hubs, while the value of their SNM coin finances the operation of the developers. The value of the coin is that it is the only way to get access to the compute, storage and network your company needs. The prices will be better than AWS.