I found EchelonMC and it feels like a serious survival server made for building with people and sticking around. It is custom built from the ground up and it is not trying to be a PvP chaos place. They say it is not about stealing or griefing.
It runs on Minecraft Java with 1.21.11 recommended and older versions supported. The server is hosted in Canada and it has been in active development for about a month with frequent patches. They also say there is no pay to win.
The gameplay has a bunch of custom systems like auto pathing where you make paths by walking and you can get speed bonuses on them. There is a currency called Echelites you earn by playing and you can spend it on progression and utilities.
Land claiming is a big deal here with visual borders and lots of settings like mob controls and protection for stuff like TNT fire spread raids and fluids. You can also publish public chunks so other players can visit your builds and it tracks rankings.
There are teams so you can invite friends share utilities and show team nametags. Deaths make graves that hold your items for a time and there is a back command to help you recover after teleports. There is also voting rewards discord linking with chat bridge a spawn hub with custom NPCs and anti x ray protection and they say they keep changing things based on player feedback.
