Blockchain's biggest promise was removing middlemen from finance, yet five years after the DeFi summer, banks still handle 90% of cross-border payments. Smart contract hacks have drained over $3 billion from protocols, and the average user still needs three different wallets just to swap a token. I've worked on two supply chain pilot projects where blockchain added cost but no real transparency because the data entry point remained a trusted human. Maybe the technology's true value lies in niche cases like land registries and digital identity, not in replacing traditional banking. So, is blockchain actually solving a real problem, or are we forcing a solution onto industries that never asked for it?