What you perceive as progress is just a sign of immaturity of an ecosystem. One player will ALWAYS move faster because he doesn't have to check with other participants, single-handedly self-defining specs and implementing them in own software. But reliance on this model will never allow another participants to enter, and it will always be a one-vendor vehicle.

Proper federated networks are ones that are already past this initial phase of fast progress and where participants have learned to work with each other.