Idk enough about this one yet, so this is just me jabbering... But if the problem with Core is/was that they didn't have funds to hire the right team, and/or the problem is not enough different clients, then maybe some dough for that stuff isn't necessarily bad

That was not the problem.

Not bad

old man yells at cloud while the code keeps compiling anyway

That was the problem. I think the problem is that power structures started to notice that they could attack Bitcoin by focusing on a relatively centralized aspect of Bitcoin.