Sure, but you don't need proof-of-work for that. All you need is for every participant to ratify the bylaws-as-code, which you can do with simple public/private

Sure, but you don't need proof-of-work for that. All you need is for every participant to ratify the bylaws-as-code, which you can do with simple public/private signing. The only reason that proof-of-work is needed for a currency is that the ledger is changing constantly. For something that changes infrequently, the double-spend problem (or the contractual equivalent) isn't nearly as big of a deal. Like I said, it depends on how you define "the blockchain". Many problems don't involve an open set of untrusted peers, and many problems don't require proof-of-work. So if you include those in the definition, then the blockchain isn't appropriate for a lot of those problems. And if you exclude those aspects, then what do you have left? A chain of cryptographically signed nodes that each point to their predecessor? That's been an underpinning of x.509 for, what, over 20 years? It's nothing new.