Some projects I know where innovation is being done.
Monero [1]: Completely annonymous yet secure currency
Truebit [2]: Decentralized verifiable computation
Oasis [3]: Decentralized, fast and cheap transactions with annonymous smart contracts
Marlin [4]: Infraestructure to speed up any blockchain
[1] https://www.getmonero.org [2] https://truebit.io [3] https://oasisprotocol.org [4] https://www.marlin.org/
What massive pace of what technology? It's a ledger (1600s technology) protected by a digital signature (30 year old technology). What exactly is the 'innovation' work being done by 'respected researchers'?