The game is called Elite Dangerous and only players can make it so. In reality it should be really renamed to Elite Private Groups.
Or it can be called dangerous because you can face many forms of danger, if you so choose. Landing on a high G planet is dangerous. Thargoids are dangerous for many players, and for some players even regular NPCs can be dangerous. I was once almost killed by a Type 9 in my FdL.
Just because the name is dangerous doesn't mean that danger has to come from PvP. For some players, maybe that's the only danger for them. For others, not so.
PS: About the first part of your post, ED is indeed a goldmine, but it doesn't have to lean into PvP to become better. The majority of players prefer PvE so improving the PvE experience would net them better results. For ED to work well as a PvP game they'd need to change a lot of the elements of the game that would result in a lot of PvEers leaving the game.
Its been demonstrated time and again in the history on online gaming, that the PvP market in open world games is relatively niche compared to the PvE market. Only open world games totally designed around PvP stand a chance of doing well, like EvE or Rust, but then they are not catering to the PvEers. Often when devs create separate PvP and PvE servers the PvP servers die, because the PvPers can't live without the PvEers but the PvEers
can live without the PvPers. It can be a bit of a parasitic relationship at times.