> four obscure, non-production databases

I guess you wanna have a word with thousands of DuckDB users?

Also Starrocks is not really niche?

> irrelevant benchmark (TPC-H)

Which is widely used in the industry... probably despite not being perfect.

> provide far-fetched claims.

And put them out there to be disseminated by others.

Keeping and extending what works, discarding the rest.

That's how we learn.

I wish you more optimism and curiosity.