You are right to doubt altcois. People are doing "research" by reading altcoin's marketing materials and shilled blogs or videos, instead of pulling some real data. The reality is, no one in real world cares about smart contracts and defi, there is no demand for it and they have too many drawbacks like security, lack of features, scalability, etc.; but this doesn't stop altcoin promoters to tell people that their smart-contract coins are the next big thing that will change the world. It's very easy to buy into this hype for a newbie who knows nothing about crypto, and these newbies tend to very quickly start thinking of themselves as "crypto experts" because a shitcoin that they bought 2 weeks ago is not up 54%. But in the long run it all ends very badly.