I do hope they get what they need. If nothing else, I think they've chosen a solid and well-founded strategy to manage the situation - the focus areas they mentioned are more important than bridging. Maintaining bridges has always struck me as something hugely resource intensive. I applaud their stewardship.

My story with moving to Matrix is similar to many others. I was enthusiastic about it, managed to persuade my groups to try it out, but then everyone was "unable to decrypt message", lost confidence in Matrix and left. The frequency with which the Matrix folks have to repeat "this is fixed in Element X and Matrix 2.0" is worrying. They keep repeating it everywhere, constantly. This indicates to me that an extremely large percentage of people have dismissed Matrix and not looked at it since their initial bad impression. This is a tough challenge to overcome, so I see why they are prioritizing evangalizing the protocol over bridges. Reputation is valuable and they need to get it back, they're definitely trying. I hope they succeed.