In the _find method, countBuilder and builder should be run in parallel when possible.
https://github.com/feathersjs/feathers/blob/8ac69f4ab5094e403062e4b95be2d4437de7ea8d/packages/knex/src/adapter.ts#L188
This would basically 2x performance on the most common find queries. Instead of finding and then counting, run both in a Promise.all.

Also, investigate "returning" for update and patch methods. I see that the create method supports this. I wonder if the builder.update supports this. If so, the secondary query is no longer needed and has considerable performance gain. See the MongoDB adapter for an example.