I don't think it aims to be "as powerful as Rust", and I think that's okay. It's decidedly a narrow, pure, opinionated language, while Rust has practicality as one of its main priorities. This language is more like Haskell, or even more Haskell than Haskell, in that while some people might want to do real projects in it, its main purpose (from what I can tell) is to explore a concept. Nothing wrong with that.