I assume this is an unrelated effort. And just an engine with basic minecraft play. Actual minecraft is too wide and deep for any "reimplementation" to fall from the skys at this point.
Anyone re-implementing minecraft would also have to reimplement all the quirks and undocumented interactions, as well as essentially staying compatible with forge and the apis mods expect. So whatever rewrite has to be in a JVM, and might as well just stick with java. Look at bedrock edition, the only people who play it are people who mis-clicked when buying or don't own a PC.
The closest anyone ever got was minetest, in C++. But honestly at this point, why rewrite a game of all software? It's not mission critical to anything (I hope) and
I would need a reference to believe that. The core minecraft community - streamers, modders, tech folks ... might be all about java edition. But I think bedrock is where the money and quantity is at this point. And despite what mojang says, I find it hard to believe that they want to maintain two code bases of converging games in the long run. Bedrock has the performance potential. Java has the mechanics that the core community prefers. Still.
It was renamed because it obviously isn't just on phones any more. With iOS, Android and FireOS, it's also on Windows 10/11, Xbox One/Series, PS4/PS5, Nintendo Switch and Chromebook.
I wouldn't call it a mod. Its a custom experience provided by a specific set of servers.
The same people who run Hypixel minecraft server?
They didn't just "maintain" a server.
They developed custom mods and solutions, over 40+ minigames, custom plugins. Like I said, its more of a "custom experience".
It is this knowledge, not "maintaining a server", which is the precursor to starting a whole new game.
For example, Icefrog was involved in the creation of the original DotA gamemode for WC3. Valve, 10 years later, hired him when they were working on DotA2. It was not his experience running a custom game mode in WC3 for this hiring - it was the custom experience he helped create