Node 20 was the latest version, also with LTS support 2 years ago. The main problem was it was actually really hard to use at that point as many dependencies weren't compatible with it, so you have to wait until those dependencies are updated to node 20 before you can use it in your project and by the time that's done maybe you've got a year of support left before you need to upgrade the project. So essentially this is a yearly dance.

There's many projects in the real world where they're not touched by a developer in a given year. That doesn't mean they're broken or stale, the opposite, it means they're such great tools that they don't need changing.

It's a bit of an annoying hassle that frankly is not an issue in many other languages.