Trying to find out what deal is #blockchain stuff.

Specifically, if there's any advantage in comparison to using e.g. Merkle trees (or a regular DHT), or (in the case of distrusted entitites) a federation of trusted third parties and/or a WoT architecture, considering Proof-of-Stake seems unworkable, and Proof-of-Work is obviously easy to game using specialised hardware once the value gets high enough to matter (leading to monopoly/oligopoly situations).

So far, I'm coming up empty.