Are there any blockchain projects NOT around cryptocurrencies?

Any true blockchain (Satoshi style) MUST have a token of value. Thats a huge part of Satoshi's innovation! The miners need to be "paid" in a token native to the blockchain, which is what drives the validation mechanism.

Anything else is just an append only Merkle tree, which has found used for 50 years

Yea there's a bunch!

- Lens Protocol [https://lens.xyz/ (one example implementation: https://lenster.xyz/)] is an early social network built on top of Polygon.

- Farcaster [https://farcaster.xyz/] is another one, that takes a more hybrid approach of using Ethereum for trustless identity, but stores social stuff in a "sufficiently decentralized" way.

- ENS [https://ens.domains/] is a universal username system.

- Unlock Protocol [https://unlock-protocol.com/] uses NFTs for tradeable subscriptions, event tickets, etc.

- Radicle [https://radicle.xyz/] is a decentralized Github basically, that (optionally) uses Ethereum to store the Git HEAD of a "project" essentially.

- Arweave [https://www.arweave.org/] stores files permanently using a cool "endowment" mechanism. Currently, the network has secured its storage for like 1000 years in theory.

There's a whole ecosystem of apps that use smart contract chains as a trustless/decentralized/distributed compute and storage layer, and use "cryptoeconomics" to incentivize user behavior toward a goal that isn't money-based. It's just far less mature (and noisy) as all the finance stuff, so anyone not actively building in the space isn't seeing most of it today!

There used to be lots of interest by fintech companies in using private blockchains to secure trading of derivatives and such. I got the impression it was seen as a way to keep exchanges private (which means less transparency and less ability to regulate them). Not sure if anything came of it, it may be in use but how would anyone know? Though the idea was to use it for verifiable transfers of things of value it wasn't really a cryptocurrency, it focused more on the unforgeable ledger aspect.

Some time ago I even created a list of non-financial blockchain applications: https://github.com/machinomy/awesome-non-financial-blockchai...

After few years I am convinced, that anything blockchain/decentralization related must inherently have some monetary incentives flow.

Git

Well there is Mattereum: https://mattereum.com/

Hyperledger Fabric (and family)

It uses proof of authority

https://www.hyperledger.org