Solutions to the Byzantine generals problem such as Paxos or Raft are more general than blockchain. And other solutions to distributed computing problems exist like conflict-free replicated data types. My problem with blockchain is that it is an infinitely-growing public ledger, and that while bitcoin needed it, not much else needs precisely that. Many things may benefit from something *like* blockchain, but not actually blockchain. And for a decade people have been running around with a beautiful hammer (blockchain) looking for nails to hit, and not finding any interesting nails (problems) so they started creating nails so that they would have a use for their beautiful hammer. Take git for example. It is both distributed and it has a blockchain. But it's not a bitcoin-like blockchain requiring some network of nodes and Raft to operate. Most problems can be solved more like git and less like bitcoin. Bitcoin is the only real problem I can think of that actually needs what bitcoin did.

He would argue the Bitcoin blockchain is the first and only open system solution to the Byzantine Generals problem. He would also probably go on to say its temporal structure enforces agreement on history. Neither of those outcomes are ugly.