My point was that it became the engine behind trackerless BT because it worked in the presence of NATs - even if other architectures, like Chord, had superior properties (if you assume an unrealistic model of the open internet).

The other point of note is that Kademlia was not designed to work in the presence of NATs. That was a feature whose value was only appreciated when ISPs ran out of open IP addresses and NAT'd up whole networks. It shows the value of exploratory, basic research.