Well eventually consumers don't really know how the system they are using works. Prediction markets run on blockchain but few people know this. Robinhood is offering trading in perpetuals of companies that haven't IPOed yet and you would not know.
Pentiment is a Peabody award winning video game that covers this period. It's terribly engaging and well written. I'd use the word "educational" but that might make it sound dry, which it is not.
Real World Assets (RWA) is the hot stuff these days. While it is still early the mega-banks are starting to pile on.
One of the reasons is that any infrastructure built on blockchain is reusable for free by everybody (minus transaction free). Uniswap and Aave have been chugging along for years and are starting to acquire reputation beyond retail. Privacy is moving along as well where you can tokenize, say, bonds and hide the in/out flows with ZK proofs.
Somebody already posted it but I wanted to mention it again, investigations that Telegram has not been able to dispute have revealed that Telegram's infrastructure is managed by a person who is also managing infra for FSB. And this is happening unbeknownst to Telegram employees.
I think one thing that we have come to think as electronic consumers, or just consumers in general, is to expect the absolute best modern version of everything (plug, AI model, car...). I think it is pure conditioning and we forgot the simplicity and convenience of things just working even with apparent downsides relative to acme version. Could USB-C be better? Probably. Is just settling on a standard so you don't have to think about it preferable? I think so. Consider USB-C standardization as an expression of a specific system of values.
An average user does not need to run their own node for decentralization to work. It just needs to be cheap and easy enough for enough of technical users to run
It is all about the system of values. The system of values that the stereotypical high powered CEO billionaires have is unfathomable to me. Do they have time to breathe? Do they have friends? Their lives sound boring and unfulfilling.