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Because another factor that isn’t talked about is that as bitcoin rises in price, and as nation-states start buying in size, the rules will be harder to change. So inaction — not deciding — is actually a very consequential decision.
I get the sense this is true, and it's often stated as fact, but I'm not sure it is. If the reason we can't get consensus upgrades done now is that our "leadership" doesn't want them (which is how the essay started), then it's not bitcoin's popularity preventing upgrades.
Both could be true, less leadership or greater adoption make bitcoin harder to change, but if it's simply a lack of leadership, then there's some hope we'll get upgrades no matter how long we wait and not matter the level of adoption.
It's likely both, but i'd also argue that the lack of leadership could also be caused by increasing adoption. If many of the leaders left because the fights got too contentious, we need to understand that the fights get more contentious when there's more at stake, and when there's more adoption there's more at stake.
Bitcoin is already one of the world's largest asset classes. In some sense, it needs to ossify so that all the people and organizations with stakes riding on it have some degree of predictability.
I think we're at the point where L1 development is gonna become stale, for all the reasons stated in the OP, and most of the development will come from L2 products.
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51 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 15 Nov
Good point. Fewer people want leadership roles when the stakes are higher. Hopefully we'll get someone brave enough and socially savvy enough to help us do what's required when it's required.
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