We need villages to be added in the game as well as villagers that could trade with you, you could make the villages be safe and indestructible like the main spawn in survival multiplayer, and the villagers could move but not be out of that safe area or be attacked by any entity or player, this could make you want to explore the world more to find those villages and it could finally make emeralds useful
We are considering adding villagers to the game in one of the future updates.