That's probably a big part of it. Or marketing in general, the target audience for tech-as-tech is tiny. But clearly if you provide real value using that tech it can have wider appeal.
Discussion
Usually people rarely care about the tech. They just want a solution. It’s possible that the tech you mentioned is fine and could work if enough people cared, but like I said I don’t know anything about it. From my own experience with niche tech stuff - it’s very easy to learn about and ignore because it feels too technical and it’s not exactly clear why I should care when this other more prominent thing exists, it works and it’s easy.
💯 With consumers, the tech is almost completely irrelevant as long as the applications built on it are fluid and functional. For devs, the tech is interesting and important, but speed of iteration and onboarding seem to be most important to win out in the end. #Nostr checks off the developer box and is making a lot of progress on the consumer side.
Its not the marketing problem. It is the incentives problem. Everyone that needs p2p protocols build them for just themselves, innovate in isolation. We have had many such innovations that cannot be understood or reused. Especially open source softwares.
Instead we need a front. A coordination between researchers specifically researching this topic. This research group's main goal would be to innovate, document and educate. This group should make money by educating. Do not go pay $100k and study in MIT, instead pay significantly less and learn from the real builders, ask them why they did what they did, their train of thoughts.