It's not just you; Decentralized exchanges are the #1 voted growth industry as reported by coindesk's State of the Blockchain 2017

There is a lot to Bitshares, I remember when was starting out feeling the same way! Bitshares is not just an asset for transfer, an exchange, a voting platform, prediction markers, asset creation platform. It is a powerful and scaleable platform that allows for a wide range of use cases but its primary focus is on being a DEX and asset creation/management platform.

For example; the UI/UX is being developed by a team of developers are managed by @billbutler - Bill is a shareholder approved contractor via a worker proposal that was voted into acceptance and he is actually being paid by the blockchain (Bitshares has a reserve pool which on shareholder vote can be used to fund projects/development/marketing - whatever you can get shareholder approval of)

All those 'Active Workers' are approved projects that are being funded by the blockchain itself.

I think a good starting point is the video collection from Chronos Crypto