What are the other goals of the project?
Personally, I'd love to see an easier-to-manage system with replication considered as a first-class feature rather than bolted on at the end.
2. Couldn't agree with you more with easier-to-manage as a first-class feature, but some times easier-to-manage is built on stability, that's what datafuse is trying to do.
p.s. Please don't add in-process DNS caching ;-)