It happened again today.  The developer of a proprietary blockchain Adam Ludwin of Chain told Fortune interviewer Jeff John Roberts to beware of the hype surrounding blockchain.   And Roberts duly reported his opinions.  Why would Ludwin undercut the blockchain and why would Roberts play this up? Perhaps because Ludwin wants to sound like a wise and cautious man whose application of blockchain to the fintech market is a better option for investment for other cautious and wise people. Perhaps Roberts wants to save us from our optimism. 

Proprietary blockchains are old news and, to protect their space, they may want to shift attention from where we are going to where we are now.  They don't have a huge window before they devolve to just another variant on a theme. To be clear; there are a lot of technical, legal, and logistical issues to be resolved before the open general purpose and multi-use blockchains like Ethereum are ready for broad and widespread adoption.  But these are solvable problems and there are good minds working on them and many of these good minds are not self-serving or engaged in protecting their turf.  Open systems where folks do not lay claim to a particular piece of turf and evolve through the good actions of the crowd of developers are going to win the long game.  Look at Linux.  Look at the Internet.  Look to the Blockchain and smart contracts.