[t_mann]

Aave is an overcollateralized lending protocol with immutable code and a front end hosted on IPFS. That's fairly (not fully) close to providing a 'code-and-forget', public-goods-like web service. Liquity is an overcollateralized stablecoin that doesn't even have an own front end, but has a parameter in the protocol that front end providers can use to set their rewards. Both have also weathered the recent crashes pretty well.

[FargaColora]

I don't know what most of those words mean, but I do know that Aave is not being used in any popular sense, beyond people speculating that the price of the token increases. I was hoping someone would provide a link to a "popular and useful" example.

[t_mann]

Lending is a financial service and undeniably useful. In fact, chances are high that you've used loans in some form yourself already. Overcollateralized means that the value of the collateral is greater than the loan value, as is common for eg mortgages in 'traditional' finance.

I don't have usage statistics, but they're definitely not insignificant.