Comment by xanderlewis

The real value is in advancing the understanding but very few outside academia understand this (it’s counterintuitive, which is fair enough as it’s somewhat unique to mathematics as a subject), so if you want to get funding you frame it as being for solving the problems.

Now that you can solve without understanding this setup is broken. Either the sources of funding will finally have to learn the difference and the value of the latter, or mathematics research ends.