The one exception is Helium. I'm still exploring the economics of it, but on the surface it truly adds something unique.
You can link IOT devices to a wallet and authorize them to pay to send wireless messages through gateways that are set up by miners. The incentives seem to be aligned. Gateways are rewarded based on their coverage right now, transitioning to sent messages in the future. Users who want to deploy devices buy data credits that allow them to send messages.
Gateways convert data credits used into helium, and helium is burned to create data credits.
It allows IOT devices to operate with much lower cost than cellular data plans, for a similar experience.
It's a beautiful system and I can't believe I didn't find out about it sooner. I've been so jaded by other projects that I might not have given it a chance if I hadn't heard about it from a friend.
Every crypto project is garbage in my mind until proven otherwise.