Not actively but I am following blockchain development for quite some time. I agree with you I also feel, it has many problems. e.g. now a days ethereum transactions are so expensive, suppose we create a Dapp twitter where you need to pay a lot of money to tweet and that tweet will also take a lot of time to publish, who will use that twitter but it's evolving continuously and I like how it works and all the concepts involved.

Just because a digital agreement is a smart contract, it doesn't mean that it doesn't have bugs, exploits, it's underlying infraestructure is highly centralized, the tokenomics don't work out as envisioned, etc. People with solidity knowledge can read through these contracts and verify what exactly is going on and how.

Luna/UST collapsed not due to the smart contracts not preforming correctly, quite the contrary, the contracts functioned exactly how they were programmed to, the error was to do with game theory, the tokenomics and the seigniorage system in the event of a death spiral, which is exactly what happened as many smart people predicted (see https://twitter.com/Galois_Capital , https://twitter.com/GiganticRebirth , etc).

In fact, the same types of people that knew this was going to happen read through the smart contracts or just read the whitepaper for UST/Luna, understood the underlying issues with the game-theory aspect and shorted Luna and UST. UST wanted you to trust their brand and image, the 1$ = 1 UST meme, Do Kwon's egocentric ramblings on how his project could not fail.

It is quite clear by now that programming an algorithmic stablecoin with a 1 dollar peg that relies on no collateral is a no-no, it was an interesting experiment that sadly failed, along with many predecessors (see Iron Finance, Basis Cash, etc. ).

When it comes to blockchains that use highly centralized infrastructure, it depends on the end-user whether they want to use them or not. Personally I have never used Solana and have no plans to for the reasons you've stated above and many more (being able to pause the blockchain whenever, the multiple down-times the chain has had, etc.)

Don't trust the brand, verify!!!

This is where it's our job as developers to make sure we advocate for the real projects actually building this vision. What you're referring to is a concept called "decentralization theatre" where a number of projects say they are decentralized, when in reality they are not. The unfourtunate part is that there are so many speculators who just want to make a quick buck off the industry without actually bringing any value.

This is why I made that part about "why smart contracts matter" in this course. If we build the same broken system we have in web2, or people use web3 as just a giant money grab, blockchain as an industry will not last - at all.

Every project is a gradient of decentrality, and not all blockchain projects are the same. One of the other reasons I choose to focus on ETH as the main blockchain we worked with for the course, is that as far as security and decentrality goes, it's the best, hands down.

Plenty of other projects would have paid me a ton of money (I know, because many have approached me and other developer content creators in this space), but as far as building the mission of web3, I think right now Eth is the best.

This isn't to say other projects aren't as good - some are just more junior and on the rise, and will do great things for this space. But yes, sadly, some are not so good.

We will get better are identifying projects that are not aligned with what web3 is about. As we get better, blockchain as an industry will be the standard.

It all boils down to this:

Given two agreements, one where you are guaranteed the outcome, and one where you have to trust someone to do the right thing, which one are you going to choose?
It will never make sense to choose the latter.

EDIT:
By the way, I'm glad you're curious on this. Asking candid questions like this is exactly what we need to do to keep the mission going.

I Agreed with Patrick's explanation, I'll just add the importance to audit your smart contracts, even on projects with real decentralization there are still a lot of problems, if you as a developer didn't pay strict attention on what you built. Your protocol could die miserably for "human errors". So in order to prevent most of the scenarios where a protocol looses all the credibility and funding, please be sure to audit any smart contract you are going to deploy to the mainnet.

Cheers, Vasiliy.

Learning to program smart contracts has nothing to do with the price of tokens :)
You don't stop learning about finance because some random stock went to zero!

You can never be sure of what is going to work for most of the people. Internet itself wasn't made for what is nowadays used, and however, it evolved not because of the technology only, it was the inner idea of sharing ideas all around the world. The spirit of freedom and being able to share and acquire knowledge. And a lot of people failed trying to leave their signature building the internet (electric engineering, data transferring protocols, entrepreneurial business ideas, and so on..) If you think every blockchain project has to make it through all the proposals, even when many of them are good enough, you have to get real. At least I'd say that the most important part of a project is the person behind of it, and that's the path all of us should follow in order to make a greater web environment, and get rid of all the trashy ideas that only seek for a revenue. Not more blind capitalism!

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You're absolutely right — the concept of smart contract programming holds immense potential, especially in automating trustless transactions and reducing intermediaries. However, as with any blockchain project, the token value can fluctuate or even drop to zero due to factors like poor utility, market dynamics, or lack of adoption.

That’s why partnering with the best Smart Contract development company is essential. A skilled and experienced team ensures that the code is secure, efficient, and aligned with real-world use cases, helping the project create lasting value beyond just token speculation.

Choosing the right development partner can make a crucial difference in the long-term success of any decentralized application.