To back you up somewhat with a personal anecdote... I've been working in the blockchain World for about 8 years across crypto and enterprise blockchain as an engineer, researcher and more recently a product manager, and and have come to the conclusion that there are not really very many practical applications for crypto or enterprise blockchain.

For crypto, other than censorship resistance - which most people don't actually care about because they are lucky enough not to need it - it doesn't really offer anything useful. Most crypto projects are Rube Goldberg machines whereby the operators of these companies are re-hashing all the same things our ancestors did with money. Of course they are doing well at the moment because it's morphed into a get rich quick scheme. If there was no easy money to be made there would be little interest in it, just like there was back in 2010 when I started looking at Bitcoin.

Enterprise blockchain struggles because there's no actual need for blockchain elements like chains of provenance and smart contracts if the participants are fully identified and already have business relationships. "Blockchain" is a direct substitute for trusted third parties and good legal agreements and should only ever be used in circumstances where all other options are exhausted because the technology comes with so many bad trade-offs. Doesn't scale, very complicated, difficult to manage upgrades and versions, customers find it hard to understand, etc...

> I remain unconvinced about it's practical real-world applications.

When your idea of "real-world" is one where all people have access to stable, robust and functional institutions, it's no surprise that you don't see the necessity of alternatives.

Consider it a privilege. And I don't mean it in a derogatory way.