Why is the Innodb Memcached plugin being deprecated in MySQL 8.0.22?

I originally used "the handlersocket" plugin for NoSQL access to InnoDB tables, then it eventually couldn't be built on newer versions so I migrated to the "Memcached" plugin which was being baked in by Oracle and seemed like a good long term replacement. Now there is a notice on the plugin documentation that "InnoDB memcached plugin is deprecated as of MySQL 8.0.22". Does anyone know why, and second, does this just mean that it won't be baked in any more but can still be compiled when required, or that development of the plugin has ceased? If it's the latter, are there newer/different options for socket access to tables that skip the overhead of the Query Optimizer? I don't understand why something that adds so much efficiency and flexibility would be dropped so unceremoniously :(