Thank you everyone for your guidance.
v0.9 has slipped a bit and is going to have a slightly different focus, however please note that point number 2 (less fragile local discovery) has been addressed during v0.8 - I haven’t seen any issues on that in a long time. Point number 3 (easier setup) still has some ways to go, but has also seen a bunch of work during the v0.8 branch.
A UDP based protocol remains for the future, and I do think it’s an important area for work.