I found VersusNetwork SMP and it feels like a survival server made for people who actually play a lot. It is freshly wiped and it tries to keep the world from dying fast like most vanilla SMPs do.
They focus on a real economy and they even disabled netherite upgrades for now so max gear takes more grinding and skill. It is also meant to run smooth since they use a custom optimized Paper fork and say it stays at 20 TPS.
It is zero pay to win so you cannot buy unbans crate keys or god gear. They still do events a lot.
They also support both premium and cracked and they say it is secured with backend proxy auth. The community is supposed to be active and player driven with PvP economy and votes where players get a say.
