To gain usefulness, they must first obtain usefulness. I get your point, though. Right now "making money" seems to be its only use, and that is indeed useful. But that itself isn't going to run forever.

This is exactly the kind of thing I could see Santa Fe Institute developing a cellular automaton model and visualization. It would be helpful for discovering how to make and keep NFT's "useful."

Then ironically, to pay for the research the best models could be used to back their own NFT's.