"the NFT hype never made any sense whatsoever to begin with"
I felt the same, but now regard NFTs as the first meaningful application of blockchain.
First, let's talk about land registries. In developed countries, the state administers a land registry. There is a strict, human-administered API against this registry. It allows users to inspect the full history of land; cause property splits/mergers; execute land exchange; and there is capacity for extensions like water-rights and native title. There is formal governance around some of these operations - conveyancing; council approval.
NFTs have the potential to do something similar, initially for artwork.
Imagine if every time an artist created a painting, they issued a NFT against it, and got this authorised by an authority. That authority does not yet exist, but Christie's and Sotheby's could set up in this space with low effort. Each time a transfer of the artwork occurs, both the NFT and the physical artwork change ownership to the new owner.
This would have a snowball effect, and quickly become the new standard for provenance. Insurance companies would insist that works were marked on the exchange. A stolen artwork would be nearly worthless. It would be pointless to duplicate artwork, because the sold duplicate would effectively destroy the original.
Extension: firearms. Firearms are valuable goods, and would soon be forced onto this registry. Perhaps the state would encourage this transition by asking that firearms ranges mark the transition of guns to and from the range premises by marking this on the chain.
Extension: wine. There is a live problem in China, with rubbish wine being fraudulently marked as premium Australian varieties. Each bottle could be chipped in the cap with an on-chain identifier. In the wine shop, you could use your phone to scan the identifier, and witness custody of that wine back to the producer.
Evolution: complex goods. The next evolution would be to trace the grapes that went into the wine back to the vineyard that they came from.
Reputation becomes very important in this system. This would encourage a new type of auditing profession, who serve a similar role as conveyances, but for chain operations. Once you have that, you could mark carbon credits of goods on the chain, you could have eggs tagged as being free-range or organic, etc.