Please tell me without making any promises of the future, What has Cardano done in the last 5 years that it should deserve its spot?

I have been in crypto since 2017 and following Cardano. I'm extremely confused by the 'cult like' conversations that happen in this sub and on Twitter about Cardano. What has Cardano done SO FAR that really shows that they have what it takes? I'm not talking about what is 'almost there' what I have been hearing for the last years already. What has been done so far? Please provide arguments and facts and not some vague narrative of 'best decentralized staking' or something else. A data driven approach on the amount of use cases so far would be appreciated. Saying that smart contracts are almost there etc. etc. is not an argument. Even if thats true thats literally just the beginning. That means nothing. Being happy that smart contracts are coming in a few months after starting around the same time as Ethereum is extremely worrying of how serious 'investors' are here.

Edit: about 50 comments and 0 concrete examples so far... (lol @ downvotes).

Edit 2: Ok forget my responses. Just please read through all the answers and tell me how convincing this all is. Do all of you see a pattern here?

Edit 3: Publishing scientific papers is nothing fancy. I dont know why people keep mentioning this as if its something special. Algorand, Ethereum Zilliqa etc. are also doing this. Also, its only worthwile if its implemented in reality and isn't just stuck in theory

Edit 4: Finally 1 good argument in almost 400 comments. Which is "Implemented native multi assets". This is actually a useful feature and good use case to increase the value of Cardano. Btw, please stop automatically assuming that everything Cardano has built is already the best. You dont know that. It has not been battletested yet. Its all assumptions and speculation.

Edit 5: To be honest, I am kind of dissappointed in this subreddit. For months I have been wanting to write a post like this but thought maybe others will. But literally 100s of Cardano post and nobody ever asked 'but what have they done so far'? And this is suppose to be the main cryptocurrency subreddit? This just means there is barely any critical discussion going on. Its a bit insane to me that so many people invested in Cardano but can't barely even answer basic questions and just personally attack me because 'I'm jealous' or whatever. But I guess its going up in value and they figured out the right marketing formula. Feels like EOS all over again. But at least EOS launched lol.

Edit 6: Ok this will be my last edit. I just want to leave everyone to think about what's going on. Its always easy to sell a dream than to sell something that is functional. Selling a dream about the future you can exaggerate and you cannot dispute. You can make it as big as you want it to be and if enough people believe it it can get some kind of 'cult like' charisma. But think about this. This is a team with billions of funding. Hundreds of people working on it and it is one of the oldest teams in crypto. Do you really think that they can keep up with the story they are telling after showing barely anything for the last years? There are teams like Aave with 20 million of funding that have done more in less time with a much smaller team. Just think about this.