I think this is the intent. A proposal is brought to TC39. It gets discussed. Someone champion's it (implements it in the wild). Adoption and usefulness are determined. New standards are accepted.

I think this is a much better practice than a bunch of dudes just deciding what browsers will support and how they support it without actually trying it on first.

It's pretty much all in the open. No need for conspiracy theories. The environment is significantly different than it was during the early IE days.

https://github.com/tc39/ecma262