> a state level actor cannot just stop the contract from being executed simply by putting pressure on a third party.
They just haven't gotten around to it yet. The decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies increases the number of entities that need to be pressured, but doesn't make state-level actors completely powerless.
They won't get around to it, because stopping the mining of all cryptocurrencies that sci-hub could use to pay for uptime is more work than stopping sci-hub.
Since stopping cryptocurrencies is harder than freezing third party payments (evidence: see Wikileaks), this is a single, narrow example of the usefulness of cryptocurrencies. Researchers get the convenience of sci-hub's frontend for longer than they would if sci-hub had relied on a third party payment system.
So we need some guidance. Oh that's what governments are for, definitely not a private company, which is not accountable by voters (with a wide voters base; if the voter base is not wide, made it so, don't discard democracy.)
Finally, there are a lot of good reasons why in democracy we vote per-head and not per-share. It's a big thing, but that is also being dismissed by cryptocurrencies.
They just haven't gotten around to it yet. The decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies increases the number of entities that need to be pressured, but doesn't make state-level actors completely powerless.