I know some people with privacy concerns will go out of their way to avoid any “smart” devices that communicate over WiFi. If you stick with Z-Wave/ZigBee/Matter, you don’t have to worry about any sort of external communications. I mean, even with WiFi devices you can isolate them by making a separate local-only network, but that’s a pain.
I don’t think it has anything to do with “politics”. Blockchain / crypto is an area mostly focused on hype and marketing. So it’s not surprising that their “hackathons” have little to no substance.