Always happy to bring the blockchain skepticism, this time to a story about how drivers and riders will use smart contracts to transact with each other, cutting out Uber and Lyft. motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/… 
Openness is irrelevant to consumers, but a big deal to developers. Open platforms will win if, by attracting developers, they foster an ecosystem of services that beats the pants off the closed competitors. Best example—Internet vs Minitel, Compuserve, AOL.
It's possible that there will one day be compelling blockchain ecosystem (I hope there will; that motivates much of my own blockchain research). But like the Internet, this will take time to mature—decades. Aiming to replace Uber and Lyft today is like tilting at windmills.
Open platforms never succeed by directly appealing to consumers on philosophical grounds, or even cost. Example: Linux on the desktop.
