A while back there was a thread here on how meshtastic was a lilygo proprietary stack and not decentralised.

Not really the case. Apparently this is the third meshtastic product by xiao.

It's getting there...

https://www.hackster.io/news/seeed-launches-the-smallest-lora-dev-kit-in-the-world-with-a-view-to-compact-meshtastic-deployment-7cc4cdd2e88b