It's not cheaper yet. A single transaction on ethereum costs around 5-6 dollars (on Avg) which is a huge amount.
Also yeah, you're right about the scamming stuff. The early investors of web3 scammed the shit out of general public, but that's happening with AI too, no? Everyone is portraying LLMs as AI, and more than 80% of these AI applications are just using GPT's APIs which itself is degrading with passing time. Now that all the hype of flashy web3 stuff is gone the ecosystem is working towards sustainability and growth, and I can assure you that web3 is more than just NFTs and Bitcoin.