Been mulling this over recently: 

Are blockchains only a valuable/viable technical solution when credible neutrality matters?

Head of @zksync era, venture partner @latticefund, co-founder chainstory.xyz & writer karthikoncrypto.xyz, FID 681

No. Use cases like helium don’t require credible neutrality of L1

Cofounder, Managing Partner @ Multicoin Capital

Blockchains have many interesting properties. A given app only needs to take advantage of 1

i think the key properties are

credible neutrality
censorship resistance
programmability
composability
micropayments
regulatory arbitrage

probably CN is the most broad and therefore most important, but hard to compare these concepts IMO

Perhaps a more interesting question is: “are use cases where credible neutrality is the most important thing the most compelling to be solved by blockchain” (eg is credible neutrality the most imp/interesting property of blockchains)?

i guess, but when i think of helium, i don't think of CN, i think of programmable incentives

Good pt — altho one could argue that any decentralized network that have a token or pay/issue incentives to node operators require credibly neutral infra to ensure token supply and transfers arent manipulated, right?