For me, the project of federation wasn't to create a global utopia, or even a local one — that's a project that no protocol or technology could possibly enable, and anyone selling that is a fraud.
In goal of federation as I see it is to give people choices; choices that were taken away by Facebook, mostly. That freedom ALWAYS implied a lot of hard work. It's going to be hard, and it's going to take a lot of work. I hope Facebook & others offer N-S-A/anonymous grants to enable some of that work.