For some of these applications, a Ripple clone might be much better than a proof of work based blockchain. Though maybe a pure proof of stake based chain could work.

For example if the Tor foundation had the Toripples of a Toripple setup, no paying of miners would be needed and they could issue the Toripples to useful nodes...

The big problem of proof of work blockchains for financing things is they are INSANELY expensive, typically paying over 100% of their wealth to miners. (All coins mined plus transaction fees.)

Since Tor is free open source software, possibly once DeVCoin's market cap is large enough DeVCoin could sponsor Tor nodes. All kinds of such things are very possible, it is simply a matter of getting DeVCoin's market cap to a level where a particular such project can reasonably be financed. So maybe just buckling down to the work of getting DeVCoin's market cap growing is all it will take for it to be just a matter for time for such projects to to be done...

-MarkM-