The concept of federation has won the popular debate of the open social Web. I don't think the IndieWeb is going to be able to put itself in a place that makes the "indie" part attractive anymore, and the slow encroaching need for funding of the open social Web is going to push that even further away.
It's not a prerogative of the IndieWeb (in the sense of reading the Wiki, not speaking on behalf of the community) and I think that it's a routine failure of the space and community. I've yoyo'd on…
I also feel some of the tension you describe Jacky. I don’t see the IndieWeb taking over the internet soon. There are still to many barriers to onboarding and the tools aren’t quite polished enough to provide a top tier user experience. I’m honestly not convinced it will ever be “mainstream” but I have appreciated the discussion the community has fostered about how we share online and being able to connect with people in the space.
I hope the community can continue to become more accessible to people who don’t write code. Your metaphor of people building “individual yachts” hits home as someone who has built their own site. The kind of collective tools we need aren’t easy to build/maintain/finance but I’m grateful for the stuff that’s already out there like webmention.io, IndieKit and bridgy-fed.
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