I'm not that active on matrix (mostly just passively listening on a few topics that interest me).

However, regarding your last point there seems to be an active focus on improving element and their recent post about elementX [1].

I agree with your other points though, there are a lot of experiments that often lead to nowhere (e.g. P2P is basically abandoned AFAIK).

[1]: https://element.io/blog/element-x-ignition/