Trade-offs are a problem, but in this case i don't see any physical reason for this to be a theoretical trade-off. More like a limit of the current technology.
E-ink displays are hardly new and lots of people have been thinking about/working on the slow refresh rates for over 2 decades. Do you really think that anything you can come up with on HN in 5 minutes without any knowledge of the tech is something people hadn't thought of before?
Why? Nobody said that the cell is "reset". The cell is modified. The resulting state depends on the former state. This causes ghosting.
To achieve what you are suggesting, the procedure would be e.g. to first set the pixel black, then white (reset to a base state), then the greyscale value of the intended content. This would slow down rendering dramatically, and make regions flicker.
And, note, this may be something that some "EPD waveforms" do - but there are tradeoffs... E.g. Fast? Ok, lose the greyscales. Detailed? Ok, get lots of flashing at update. Mid-way? Ok get some degree of ghosting.