That's a good observation that explains the state of things with ipfs. What they need is a few very senior engineers from say spanner that know how to do this stuff. It will be ludicrously expensive to hire them from google (a million/year per person just in compensation), it will cost them a good share of the company (for the risk), but at least they will start making progress. And no, nobody can be self taught to match the experience you get in spanner-like projects, just like nobody can self teach to build boeing-like airplanes.