This is are very good question. I really don't know why the mainstream ignored this project so far. Compared to some other projects, there is no single person in the center of the project, so there is no one to be hyped. This is sad but it seems to be a disadvantage. The loudest are getting attention and with so many projects out there, the tezos community was a long time pretty silent.
The smart contract language is completely different from solidity. Its a functional language which allows formal verification. This is one reason which makes it harder for developers to migrate to tezos. It's easeier to migrate to an ethereum clone.
Sapling came with the edo upgrade this year, this allows privacy preserving smart contracts. Gas price is extremly low. A part of the nft hype has already migrated to tezos because of PoS and low gas prices. See the stats here https://better-call.dev/stats/mainnet/general
The next upgrade is currently in the voting phase. When you're technically interested in it see here http://doc.tzalpha.net/protocols/009_florence.html
Last week a marketing campaign started, maybe you will see an add somewhere in the near future. A lot is going on in adoption atm, here a few recent news:
banking https://xtz.news/adoption/french-banking-giant-societe-gener...
gaming https://xtz.news/adoption/ubisoft-become-a-tezos-corporate-b...
stablecoin https://xtz.news/adoption/groupe-casino-with-11000-stores-to...
digital identity https://xtz.news/adoption/spruce-systems-makes-it-into-y-com...