Flying under the radar would be a good idea for a privacy coin in 2016, but not for a social media platform in 2023. In relation to Bitcoin, I've been hearing that it's still early days for 10 years. It's like a college student who wants to get a good job before he starts dating. You have to take opportunities before they pass you by. And right now, web2 is in crisis, while Reddit is kicking out mods who are protesting and Twitter is being converted into the owner's fantasy which was dismissed by PayPal 20 years ago.
Sure, we need smart contracts in order to tick a box, but I disagree that it would be a game-changer. The EVM is insecure, inefficient garbage that's only suitable for experiments, not for mass-market apps. BitShares and NXT were more advanced than Ethereum, since they had native assets and a built-in market.
Ethereum became popular with app devs because there was a lot of work to do to recreate basic features of a financial system from scratch. NFTs do appeal to a mass market, but DeFi is just a game for insiders, who don't care that it's unreliable, because they're playing with easily gained money anyway.