its a shame DANE never took off.
If we actually got around to running a trusted DNSSEC based DNS system and allowed clients to create certificates thanks to DANE, we would be in a far more resilient setup compared to what we are now.
But DNSSEC was hard according to some, and now we are running a massive SPOF in terms of TLS certificates.
It didn't "not take off" --- it didn't work. You couldn't run it on the actual Internet with actual users, at least not without having a fallback path that attackers could trigger that meant DANE was really just yet another CA, only this one you can't detect misbehavior or kill it when it does misbehave.
But DNSSEC was hard according to some, and now we are running a massive SPOF in terms of TLS certificates.