I found EchelonMC and it is a fully custom survival SMP that has been built from scratch. The server is hosted in Canada and it has been in active development for under two months. Minecraft Java 1.21.11 is recommended but older versions are supported.
The whole vibe is long term building and real progression with a strong community. It is not pay to win and they say there are no resets planned. It also is not one of those servers that just throws a big plugin pack at you.
There is a currency called Echelites that you earn by playing like mining farming fishing exploring and building. You can spend it on progression and quality of life stuff.
Protection is a big deal here with advanced land claiming. You get visual borders and a lot of settings like TNT and creeper control fire spread protection raid prevention and more. There are teams too so you can invite friends share access and use private team chat.
There is also auto pathing with speed bonuses that you can toggle. You can list public builds so other players can visit and vote. Graves help protect your items with a timed recovery system. The server keeps getting updates and they say they already added over 100 player suggestions.
