Feathering will always have to be there, to allow us to change collective pitch, and to get differential cyclic pitch to move the aircraft in the chosen direction. I believe there were a couple of attempts to remove feathering bearings, and just twist the blades to get it, but apparently that was not successful.
2-blade teetering systems exist because they are simple and CHEAP. The CHEAP side of it makes them the accepted starting point for most low-time people, and they are generally the ones to have problems with it.
Next step up is 3-bladed articulated systems, allowing the blades to shuffle around the plane with the lead-lag forces. Then add more blades as desired. Articulated hinges can be replaced with rubber/ plastics as in the AS350 series.
The most rigid is the head of the BO-105 and BK-117, no flapping or lead-lag hinges at all. Flapping is allowed by the flexible blades, not by hinges.
Early experiments with rigid systems caused crashes - the experimenters couldn't see why their models would fly but the real things wouldn't. Then they saw that the models used bamboo blades which allowed flapping - so they devised the teetering head to allow flapping, and away they went.