Is there any effort being put towards minimization of blockchain bloat, which seems the biggest issue?
No - we've discussed this on a number of occasions, and it's truly a non-issue until someone can prove to us that it is. The amount of hot air around this issue shows how poorly it's understood.
The first thing to remember is that all cryptocurrencies with "mixing" and other fluff in a bid for "anonymity" will end up with bloat. "But they can prune their blockchain!", I hear you say. Except that Bitcoin doesn't currently have the code in place to prune its blockchain or work off a pruned blockchain, and you can bet that some random altcoin developer doesn't have the technical chops to do this.
Consider, too, why this isn't "the biggest issue" for Bitcoin. Does Bitcoin's 20gb blockchain hamper adoption? No, because mostly everyone uses lightweight clients or web wallets.
The reality is that bandwidth and disk capacity is ever advancing, and there is little reason to think that Monero has a major issue if its blockchain ends up matching Bitcoin's and hits 110gb in 5 year's time. That having been said, there are definitely ways to trim on-disk usage, and we will look at doing this as time goes on. For the foreseeable future, though, this is a much lower priority than most things.