The main reason Bitcoin was invented was to solve the issue of blind trust. The funny thing is you can actually trust Bitcoin, it actually works. Just most things built on top of it are still failing the blind trust problem. I am wondering if maybe someday the blockchain advancements will solve this.
Supposedly this is one of the great leaps of smart contracts, is that now, you can force third-parties to trust you via smart contracts.
That's an excellent point. There are theoretical solutions, involving online contracts, M out of N schemes, and such. Some are even up and running. But none of them are being used much.
Etherium, Ripple, and Paycoin (XPY) were all complex systems built on top of Bitcoin. Etherium is a really complicated "smart contracts" scheme, complicated enough that there are probably exploits. Ripple was supposed to do all sorts of things, but mostly ended up as another altcoin. Paycoin seems to have been an out and out scam. None are being used much.
Bitcoin does one thing well - unidirectional, irrevocable transfers between parties who don't know each other. All its strengths and weaknesses stem from that.