

While the issue of the inter-server protocol being overly chatty is very much real, putting the burden on the users isn’t a good solution.
The focus should instead be on improving the protocol itself and its implementation with better algorithms, batching, etc. I’m not super knowledgeable about the inner workings, but I feel like there’s still some relatively “low hanging fruits” in the protocol design (are activities properly batched? are they sent as linear broadcasts to all federated instances? could we use some alternative broadcast distribution, like binomial? etc) and implementation (is the data model leading to some expensive operations? are the SQL queries well written? could we speed them up some other way?).
I say this as someone who’s been running an instance for many years now, and can tell you for sure it has been a rather bumpy ride, as a small server. Running a good and fast server with lots connections is not cheap; not as much as it should, at least imo.
As others have also mentioned, Minoxidil can be effective at slowing or stopping balding, with daily application, though it isn’t immediate (may take a couple of weeks to start showing results). It can vary a lot from person to person, so give it a shot for a couple of months before deciding whether to commit or not.