I'm not into Ethereum, but "more precise estimation of gas costs" sounds like a letdown compared to what you would want to build a really reliable smart contract. Can't a contract just die if it can't pay its gas bill?
With all the investment in blockchain (as you yourself mentioned in another comment), and so much money riding on the correctness of contracts, it seems like the incentives should line up to develop proper, usable formal methods (starting with backing down from Turing-completeness for the most part, most likely). That would be a pretty nice side effect for us skeptics. That's honestly what I was hoping for, with OP.
With all the investment in blockchain (as you yourself mentioned in another comment), and so much money riding on the correctness of contracts, it seems like the incentives should line up to develop proper, usable formal methods (starting with backing down from Turing-completeness for the most part, most likely). That would be a pretty nice side effect for us skeptics. That's honestly what I was hoping for, with OP.