The problem with network staying small is that privacy is limited in the niche. This 3y old post was about it:

Why privacy becoming a norm requires venture funding

Evgeny Poberezkin

Our answer to staying small is decentralization. The vision for SimpleX network is 1000s of independent server operators, all profitable, and 10s of competing applications, all profitable too - our plan for infrastructure payments creates revenue not only for server operators, but for application developers too. This way all participants are smaller than one large network they form. As with the Open Web.