Except that (to use your acronym) BFTSMRs are fairly common and well understood. Git, to choose the obvious example, probably qualifies.
The only thing that's new about blockchain is that it removes the requirement for a quorum of nodes in the network to trust one another. It achieves this solitary feature by means of forcing all updates to be as computationally inefficient as is economically feasable. Even then the security guarantees only hold as long as no single party can directly or indirectly control 51% of the network's collective computing power.
Aside from the cryptocurrency use case, that's a fantastically unattractive feature profile. The more fully I grasp how much of blockchain's promises rest on proof of work as a cornerstone the less optimistic I am the technology will ever have any useful real world applications other than serving as the mcguffin in weird zero sum securities market games.
The only thing that's new about blockchain is that it removes the requirement for a quorum of nodes in the network to trust one another. It achieves this solitary feature by means of forcing all updates to be as computationally inefficient as is economically feasable. Even then the security guarantees only hold as long as no single party can directly or indirectly control 51% of the network's collective computing power.
Aside from the cryptocurrency use case, that's a fantastically unattractive feature profile. The more fully I grasp how much of blockchain's promises rest on proof of work as a cornerstone the less optimistic I am the technology will ever have any useful real world applications other than serving as the mcguffin in weird zero sum securities market games.