Sam, Stephanie,
The blockchain idea is being explored for several uses beyond
BitCoin (and I agree with Sam on the speculative nature of BC -
if you're coming to Buenos Aires we could have a beer or three
to discuss BC)[1] e.g. Omni (formerly Mastercoin). It is a useful
tool for a non-hierarchycal, quasi-anonymous and reasonably
fast (in term of propagation) domain name system

There's a good article here:
http://cointelegraph.com/news/114050/change-is-coming-how-the-blockchain-will-transform-the-domain-name-business
There's even a registrar for decentralized domain names:
https://peername.com/

Not zillions of papers yet, but it's an area of intense academic
research. Some are thinking of it usefulness for voting
systems, something with extra complications (as you know,
voting systems are extremely complicated from a theoretical
standpoint-- and from a practical one too.)

Regards,

Enrique


[1] Of course, I'm not meaning British Columbia :)