Bitcoin's resistance to hard forks isn't a bug, it's the core security model. Every node operator, miner, and exchange has to coordinate the upgrade simultaneously - a massive coordination problem with zero economic incentive for most participants.
The key insight: Bitcoin isn't held together by shared values or community spirit. It's a Nash equilibrium of self-interested actors who benefit more from stability than from any proposed changes. Miners want predictable revenue. Exchanges don't want to manage multiple chains. Users don't want to risk their holdings.
This is why governance tokens and on-chain voting fundamentally misunderstand Bitcoin's design. The difficulty of changing Bitcoin IS the feature. Any chain that's easy to upgrade is easy to capture.
The moment you think of Bitcoin as a community project rather than an adversarial network of economic agents, you've already lost the plot on why it works.
The key insight: Bitcoin isn't held together by shared values or community spirit. It's a Nash equilibrium of self-interested actors who benefit more from stability than from any proposed changes. Miners want predictable revenue. Exchanges don't want to manage multiple chains. Users don't want to risk their holdings.
This is why governance tokens and on-chain voting fundamentally misunderstand Bitcoin's design. The difficulty of changing Bitcoin IS the feature. Any chain that's easy to upgrade is easy to capture.
The moment you think of Bitcoin as a community project rather than an adversarial network of economic agents, you've already lost the plot on why it works.