You can write anything that you would be able to write on a server and put it onto the blockchain. Instead of Javascript making calls to the server, you would be making calls to the blockchain.

Whereas most technologies tend to automate workers on the periphery doing menial tasks, blockchains automate away the center. Instead of putting the taxi driver out of a job, blockchain puts Uber out of a job and lets the taxi drivers work with the customer directly.

You could imagine something like a completely automated system for renting bikes that's just done completely over blockchain crypto-payments. And theoretically just sort of start it up, and it works completely autonomously.

Although the Ethereum blockchain is a public blockchain, it is great to see private and consortium blockchains using the Ethereum code base actively under development.

The thing that I often ask startups on top of Ethereum is, 'Can you please tell me why using the Ethereum blockchain is better than using Excel?' And if they can come up with a good answer, that's when you know you've got something really interesting.

Initially, I thought that Ethereum was a thing that would be used for people to write simple financial scripts. As it turns out, people are writing stuff like Augur on top of it.