That’s exactly the problem for me: I’m the kind of person who sees money as “a token to be traded for goods and / or services”, and why would any normal person (ie, not counting crypto investment nerds) want to trade their eth if the most profitable thing to do is to hoard it?
With stable currencies, if I buy $10 of stuff today, then I have $10 of stuff, and at the end of the week my bank account will be $10 (+/-0.01%) lower than where it would have been had I saved the money. I don’t regret this purchase.
With inflation-stage cryptocurrencies (Which I’m assuming ETH is, given that the article says "At the time of writing, ETH is at an all-time-high”), if I buy $10 of stuff today, then I have $10 of stuff, and at the end of the week my bank account has missed out on $300 of inflation. I should’ve saved my memecoins and used some other currency instead.
It sounds like you have some additional constraints that you didn't make clear in your original question.
You said, "Tell me how to do something worth doing with ETH and I'll be impressed."
Also, you need things that you can do without capital, and that fit a specific risk profile that you haven't elaborated on. It sounds like you're assuming that making these yields are too risky for you, so are you looking for zero risk, or can you accept some risk?
Can you specify up front your constraints?
Here are two things you could do with ETH right now:
1. You could use it as the coordination layer for a decentralised git repository, that is fully distributed and censorship resistant. Hopefully you can see how this could easily be adapted to many similar use cases: https://github.com/cardstack/githereum
2. You could purchase flight delay insurance that pays out automatically if your flight is delayed: https://etherisc.com/