Baby steps my friend, baby steps. Vinnie and company are doing things in small steps, to minimise the affect that BearShare has on the rest of the gnutella network, since it is one of the major clients out there.

2.4 was made to introduce file hashes (in preparation for 2.5). 2.5 will come with swarmed downloads (the latest 2.4 beta is very good at swarming from all clients). 3.0 will incorperate the LimeWire's implementation of Ultrapeers, instead of the Defender type of technology, so that no clients will be left out.