There is a solution called Radiance Cascades [1] which doesn't require a denoiser for rendering real-time shadows for volumetric lights. Unfortunately the approach is relatively slow, so solutions based on denoising are still more efficient (though also expensive) in terms of the quality/performance tradeoff.
One issue with modern ReSTIR path tracing is that currently the algorithm relies on white (random) noise, which contains low-frequency (large-scale) noise, which produces blotchy boiling artifacts at low sample counts. Optimally an algorithm should use some form of spatio-temporal blue noise with exponential decay to only get evenly distributed high frequency samples. But that's still an open research problem.
One issue with modern ReSTIR path tracing is that currently the algorithm relies on white (random) noise, which contains low-frequency (large-scale) noise, which produces blotchy boiling artifacts at low sample counts. Optimally an algorithm should use some form of spatio-temporal blue noise with exponential decay to only get evenly distributed high frequency samples. But that's still an open research problem.
1: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rG2aok2SdbU