Once you go beyond these functional but boring DeFi projects, you run into a ton of scams, wild "experiments for the sake of experiments", and projects that are just trying to extend the ponzis built on top of established protocols.
Take all the forks. One algostable becomes successful and suddenly there are hundreds of forks that collapse within days, sometimes hours (TOMB is an example).
Most of the promises of DeFi are absolutely nothing but pure ponzis that collapse once new money stops coming in. OHM chart is the best example. "Reserve currency" that dropped 99% because new money stopped coming in.
What it essentially boils down to is the simple question: what's the use of these projects besides making money? Don't get me wrong - speculation can be a use case. But I've never heard of speculators take the holier-than-thou, "we'll change the world" tone that crypto proponents seem to take.