Projects like these are great, and absolutely in traditions of Scheme, PL research, hobbies/learning, and sometimes startups.

Not everything has to be overtly adopted to be worth doing.

Historically, when someone makes some advancement that doesn't lead to adoption, it seems often because:

* there's no follow-through to production-grade (maybe the norm with PL dissertations, if the next job isn't industry and directly involving that same platform);

* the market applicability is too niche/nonexistent, at least at the time (e.g., someday people will realize better DSLs were figured out a long time ago); or

* didn't promote it well enough.