Do you happen to know exactly how that all works and how it matters for individual users?

My understanding, and I might be wrong, is that it really doesn't matter which instance you join due to federation. I thought the only time it mattered was if one instance decided to cut federation with another, and even in that case it would just affect your ability to interact with the instance that was de-federated.

Would be nice if account creation was a bit easier to be honest. Would be much easier if they allowed federated authentication with Google, Facebook or Microsoft. Just two clicks and you're in a new server. Instead of having to write passwords in a bunch of places, which is slow and insecure. That way exploring instances would be a lot faster and easier for newcomers.