I've a suspicion that what's missing is those early producers drew inspiration from a diverse set of non-genre (or non-electronic) art, and also were driven at least partially by the lack of good experimental electronica in their early years (scarcity breeding experimentation or something?)
Whereas nowadays most people are (justifiably) inspired by a preponderance of music _within the style they're creating_. Pair that with a strong focus on "how to sound like X" style tutorial content and I imagine it's tougher to extricate yourself from Building A Product long enough to invent.
I often feel kinda retroactively jealous of how much amazing tutorial content is at our fingertips these days, "you can learn anything!" but do wonder if the relative isolation and drought in those early days was perhaps more of a benefit to prolific output than this abundance of input is.
Much easier to consume than produce - unless there's nothing to consume :)
I think rampant piracy of an easy to use - gamified production environment pushed music forward in a big way. Renoise did similar things for the mid-2000s North American breakcore scene, and its much prettier sibling IDM was more in-love with MAX/MSP, Csound, Pure Data and so on.
After this period - i think Trap kicked everyone aside in conjunction with Soundcloud becoming the defacto standard for music sharing - vinyl was STILL very much en-vogue in 2000-2010 period. Trap was also accompanied by De-constructed club (ala Sophie) as the new hotness. One of the big draws in this period was complete irreverence for tradition, and lineage. The avante garde and pop world very much were co-mingling. This peaked with hyperpop being coined as a genre.
Right now?? I think "global bass" is the new-ness. UK and the USA have been sidelined imo - South Africa (qgom and related) and Nigeria with their local styles - Afrobeats, amapiano and others I cannot remember for the life of me...check out labels like Nyege Nyege, Hakuna Kalula and so on...It's really all about Africa right now. And music consumption via viral tiktok is very very much on-trend (sadly)
And even more recently? most likely BR Funk (Brazilian) is making waves. You know its making waves because - low sound quality has in my opinion always been a marker of something new. Trap was pretty aweful sounding until it got its bearings.
As a side - i think a KEY to these strong musical movements is a strong geographical identity...whenever music styles are exported, something is lost. What made (early) dubstep special was the influences of the kids living in those areas - SE Asian supermarkets, traditional SE Asian musics (as samples), and the UK hardcore continuum together are a beautiful thing :)
Has anything like this ever happened since? I keep chasing the dragon but I haven’t seen anything of this sort occur. It seems like we’ve mostly stabilized and are back to an equilibrium.