The new version will offer a choice of approaches to anonymity. I wouldn't call it a mess but there is 25 years of history to the project which does inevitably lead to some complexity. I summarize the naming situation here [1]
A mess is if you drop a cup of milk on the carpet.
Commandeering the name of a decades old and well-known project whose only remarkable feature is anonymity, and then not making anonymity integral to the new project, is like destroying the milk factory and telling everyone to drink orange juice instead.
Nothing has been destroyed—Hyphanet is still available at https://hyphanet.org/. Freenet's most remarkable feature is its use of a small-world network to achieve decentralization; anonymity systems weren't new even in 1999. A pluggable approach to anonymity is simply a better architecture.
Nor is this the first time Freenet has been redesigned; the last time was in 2005.
The notion that this is some sort of catastrophe is melodramatic. Rebrands and rearchitectures happen all the time, and in this case, for good reasons—reasons that critics of the decision always fail to address.
I summarize here [1], you can find more context here [2], and learn more about the differences here [3]. For a detailed explanation of the new design see the video talk above.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Freenet/comments/1d05zw9/questions_...