Blockchain is well and truly pushing through as a meme to take seriously in banking, with the keenest technologists seeing revolution (and better dividends) amid the carnage.The most zealous expect a wholesale reconfiguration of the industry on apps centred on blockchain thinking.One measure of a bank taking it seriously is a conference -  and the Sydney Blockchain Workshops were unveiled yesterday by Commonwealth Bank.The Coalition of Automated Legal Applications, COALA, an Australian lobby, is a co-producer.The week of workshops, beginning 7 December, is for its own people, suppliers and others.The aim is "to better understand the upcoming challenges and opportunities of blockchain technologies, and their impact on the current social, economic and political order."The program is ambitious, with "both entry-level education and in-depth discussions about the huge potential of distributed ledgers and the resulting economic, commercial, legal and social policy questions," on the agenda.Blockchain engaged a ton of interest at the recent Sibos conference in Singapore."An internet of value has got to start with the banks," an optimistic and busy Ripple CEO Chris Larsen told Banking Day at Sibos. Ripple plans to divert legacy and cumbersome bank messages onto a better-engineered payments chain reliant on a "distributed ledger.""It's got to have an impact," Larsen said.The banking industry, he said, "needs a complete upgrade of its value."Ripple already has footholds in trials to reshape correspondent banking.The involvement of lawtech geeks COALA in this CBA blockchain conference tells you plenty are thinking widely.