My question, however, is: when will we start seeing real utility projects within the TON
An easy question, this should be asked to developers who enjoy creating projects in the $TON ecosystem. When will their minds move away from simple projects like "tap to earn"? and start building real projects as game changers in this ecosystem. I think if "tap to earn" projects are still promising for developers there, they won't think about getting out of the box, every day there are more and more "tap to earn" projects which make this ecosystem look boring.
tap to earn project is easier to grift on people and most of the dev doesn't even hide it, demanding "donation" otherwise you're not going to qualify, but at the end the just give you fraction of the money you spend and call it a day sometime make you ineligible near TGE for some absurd reason, definitely this tap to earn mini game aren't going away, the ton ecosystem is full of that and even has become the characteristic of the blockchain this is why I would never touch ton ecosystem even with 10ft pole ever again.