curious, have you looked into the years worth of research and work that actually went into the merge? it didn't materialize out of thin air, people had to build it first.
sending money to family in countries with harsher financial systems, being able to donate to causes you support without it being traceable to you (through tornado cash and zcash/monero), being able to move large amounts of money instantly with minimal fees and no intervention, etc.
thought we were talking about open source community research. i'm not here to get into the debate of if crypto has a scam problem, it does. but that isn't research.