"Little to show"? You're not paying attention.

You seem to like Helium, and I see that their gateways cost ~$1000, where as The Things Network seems to point you to RPi hats at ~$200. If the crypto innovation is effectively making the network more expensive to use and increasing the cost to build it, all so the operators/miners can earn a little on the side, this doesn't seem like innovation at all. Seems like you could do this with some sort of micro payment scheme (where the initial cost can be paid off), especially since LoRa seems to cater to industrial IoT mostly.

If you had a solar powered Things Network, it would be effectively free to use, and you could add more nodes as required at a cheaper cost.

Helium has solved the coverage problem through creating deployment incentive. You're missing the point of helium to such a large degree your post almost sounds like satire.

Someone looking at TCO might think differently. Someone looking at expanding the network at 5x the cost likely would think differently.

LoRa also seems to be a proprietary standard owned by a single company, regardless, there have been mesh networks built with public and private funding that do not artificially keep costs high for longer than needed. If this isn't the goal for Helium, it would be tough to recommend or use.