Honestly I think the name of the project might be limiting its adoption. It’s sometimes annoying for the more technically inclined among us, but branding matters a lot. You need a name that’s snappy and memorable, which “Librewolf” is not.

Firefox is actually a pretty good example of good branding. It’s short, rolls off the tongue, has pleasant alliteration, and evokes mental imagery.

Unfortunately on the whole techies are absolutely poor at marketing, which is a skill all by itself.

I wonder how those ‘use GNU IceCat’ conversations went, if they ever happened.

It's behind by some weeks on major, contributing new features is difficult because most dev effort seems to be on integrating upstream. It is a great easy path for the less technical to 'more privacy', but pretty much if you are a developer just harden it yourself IMO.