You don't want to use https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp ... inary-data ?

I would say only buy official wroom-32d/u with espressif logo and fccid.

The lan8720 needs a clock to do anything, not sure why there is no output on gpio0 for you

You can create a partition or you could store in efuse block 3

you can't use gpio 6-11

Which esp-idf version do you use?

If you have more than 5 devices, mesh. Otherwise, gatt.

You didn't say what type of devices but this is exactly what Bluetooth mesh is for.

If you are using the same binary on both boards it would suggest a hardware issue. Dfrobot uses a clone of wroom32 but adafruit uses official wroom32 and the boards have different power supply components.