I'm sure this is tried (I've done it myself), but a hybrid approach would take best of both worlds; heavy rendering on a canvas, the rest as SVG/DOM elements.

I'm sure this is tried (I've done it myself), but a hybrid approach would take best of both worlds; heavy rendering on a canvas, the rest as SVG/DOM elements. Even this relation can be inverted: to speed up SVG interactions, I pre-render complex path and text elements at a sufficient resolution, which are shown during transitions/user interactions, but replaced with the SVG original elements once the render loop settles down again.