there shouldn't be a rush to replace the things that have stood the test of time. Lindy's law would suggest a protocol that's been around 40+ years is fundamental and won't be going anywhere anytime soon.
those ugly workarounds are actually brilliant signs of adaptability (not signs of failure). SMTP isn't inadequate, it's resilient. There's a good chance we'll still have SMTP around another 50-500 years.
No, we won't w/o breaking changes. There's no way.
Even ignoring pressing issues like lack of mandatory E2EE, SMTP requires encoding binary data into text. This includes the main body for most emails these days. Awfully wasteful.
