I've been working closely with numerous cryptocurrencies over the past four years and I cannot get past an observation (maybe limited by my own perception) of the industry and its technology.

I will state that I am not anti-crypto, per se, but I am anti-whatever I am about to describe. I think crypto can provide a useful utility for people, namely transferring funds elecronically without an intermediary (kinda). Do I think the world would be worse without crypto? Not really. I am content with Bitcoin and Ethereum, but beyond those I have not actually found a coin that offers "life-improving" technology.

I am going to completely generalize here, so take it with a grain of salt. Keep in mind that I am a "nothing-to-show" dev who hasn't created such "successful" projects before.

After reading through and working with many crypto projects, there are practically none that seem impressive anymore. They are either poorly documented, hastily written, over-engineered or just faulty. Rarely do they promise something life-changing or revolutionary, no matter how much they hype it up on social media. With confidence I can say that the majority of them are just purely copy-pasted code and ideas that add one extra feature in hopes of securing a voluptuous cash grab.

It's gotten to the point where it's laughable to me when a new crypto project appears and it's just a fork of Ethereum or some other code with a few changes added and a shiny, new website with some marketing.

Sometimes I think of all the code written for these projects and man-hours wasted. It's comical, actually, especially since the code is just re-written over and over or just abandonware at the end! This may be an issue with the software industry as a whole, but it's amplified here.

Compare these types of projects with real engineering marvels, like a bridge or a skyscraper, or even a missile launcher that will end up blowing up some hospital far far away. Where is the utility in GooberCoin? Where is the longevity? It's nowhere to be found, because it doesn't actually matter -- it's FakeTech and it exists on web5 only.

Here are the most extreme archetypes of people in the crypto industry: those obsessed with money, and those obsessed with technology. Probably sometimes both. This may also apply to all industries, but I can see it very clearly here.

The person obsessed with money is an opportunist who wants to use technology to lure in investors (big and small). They want the end product as fast as possible so that the money flows in and the project says relevant. They will claim that the project provides something more or is revolutionary. For the record, I don't have anything against someone earning a lot of money through business, but it appears to me that these projects are commonly deceptive and don't actually provide anything useful (and sometimes don't even work well!). They will tell you that these projects boost the entire industry as a whole and that they're all working towards a common goal, yada yada...

The person obsessed with technology is intelligent, but how I see it, unwise. They want to implement the latest findings in mathematics, cryptography, networking, computer science, etc, but without truly contemplating the question "is this work necessary or beneficial for society?". The amount of funds in the crypto industry allows this to be possible. The technologist, investors and end-user are all feeding off of each other. They all love extremely complicated systems that are almost esoteric, when all we probably need is something simple that serves a good purpose and does it well.

Take the latest paper in cryptography and implement it, then generate a surplus of "coins" attached to this technology, and then sell it to people who want to enjoy the benefits of snake oil and get RICH! Done!