I've looked into the various configurations that these private EVM's can be run in and honestly it was quite an eye opener and the reason that it was decided this was a path that must be explored and brought to fruition.
Not a huge fan of the way Ethereum is/was run tbh but I do dig the technology it's got under the hood.
Yeah Private Virtual machine aren't new. Counterparty once had it-softforking smartcontract on bitcoin though it wasn't on a sidechain and suffered support for it didn't use bitcoin as native gas token. Suprised that it now catching on though
XCP was sort of ahead of its time in a sense!
The way the VM is ultimately implemented decides on if it's truly decentralized. I'm certainly interested in creating something that leverages whatever parts it can from HIVE while also remaining fully functional as a solidity smart contract compatible EVM. The whole project and it's possibilities are quite exciting to me honestly.
And then there was Bitshares. NuBits for a stable coin. Good thing we have much better options these days.
Legend has it the site that exists as Hive-Roller.com hatched from an egg long ago as a Nubits platform.. ;)