BTW @disregardfiat, in the very long term, do you think that very cheap computer hardware can solve all the scalability problems without more scalable software in blockchain consensus?
For example, what if it costs $1 to run a bitcoin node with 32 megabyte blocks and a 50 year history. What does that mean for a dpos chain?
I've been thinking about this recently, as with quantum computing we might have abundant resources.
I think that trust systems like these will be run by interested parties. Have a chain for your town, have a chain for a game, have a chain for your business, and lets them settle payments between themselves. Decentralization is not ever likely to be 7 billion people consensusing on 7 billion peoples worth of transactions. But running some hardware for your neighborhood, and things that you give your actual attention to would scale nicely... even now.