Part of the thing that moves terms from "hype" to "real" is: money.

Take the example of a singer.

v1: "I'm an aspiring singer."

"Oh cool. What experience do you have?"

"So far I've played at home & family gatherings..." (<- not real)

v2: "I'm an aspiring singer."

"What experience do you have?"

"I have a 10 million dollar contract with Interscope." (<- real)

By that standard, one of the reasons that web3 is 'real' is because so much money has been poured into it.

At this point, there are enough highly skilled (Google-quality) engineers, working on web3 things, who are funded for years, that real profit-earning web3 companies will result.

So web3 will end being judged a success, on its own terms, purely because of that.