Part of my confusion is also the social/community aspect, especially with Haskell hackers' frequent and negative attitude toward the enterprise, like Stephen Diehl who has become a sort of spokesperson for the "web3 is a farce (and worse)" narrative. It seems like such a stark juxtaposition, especially with SPJ and Lennart Augustsson, two research giants of the community, taking part in it in a serious capacity.
(To be abundantly clear and uncontroversial, as it pertains to this comment, I'm not interested in discussing "is web3/metaverse {good,bad}", but rather in discussing the purely functional programming community-of-community's interests or anti-interests in it.)
I reckon SPJ is sufficiently "researchy" that it doesn't really matter how it's applied, it's the research that matters. Also, he seems perpetually delighted that he gets to do what he does, and is paid to do so.
The applications I’ve heard for Idris also have to do with finance (although not blockchain stuff).