This summer, I overhauled my blinds, upgrading the nodemcus to Xiao esp32c3s so I could run the more modern version of Tasmota on them, and start testing out matter. It worked really well (I think I had procrastinated upgrading because of the costs of esp32, but it's gotten so much cheaper now than it was a couple of years ago). Which got me thinking: could I install a zigbee chip on one of my blinds and use zigbee2tasmota to expose them over matter, thus eliminating HomeAssistant? I installed z2t and was surprised at how well it worked with my lights, but the berry scripts to expose zigbee endpoints aren't done yet. (It is on the road map so I'll definitely keep an eye on it as the project develops.)
The world of single board computing is alive right now. Like Julie Andrews spinning on a grassy hilltop, if you're willing to go down the rabbit hole, you'll might come out singing. The 'chip shortage' of the past few years has left many people (myself included) a lot more willing to experiment than they might otherwise have been. Internet sentiment evidences a community that is a strange mix of excited, annoyed (the comments on this article), and somewhat unsettled. I can't wait to see what another year or two brings as people respond to what's going on in this space.