As I explained in a Take two weeks ago, I think that the risk (or the promise, depending on your point of view) of protocol ossification is somewhat exaggerated, at least at this time.
Yes, the rate of soft forks has decreased significantly over the years, the last being Taproot in 2021. But this seems to have more to do with a lack of interest in the proposed reforms ' recommendation since then, rather than what it is due to the lack of a good process for using protocol updates. (Though that's not exactly a problem to solve either.)
Bitcoin Core developers are usually funded on a freelance or completely volunteer basis, meaning they don't have to work on any specific part of the core code. Therefore, their time and energy will be dedicated to whatever is most interesting or important to them to work on. So far, none of the soft fork recommendations have really been: the differences contract-style opcodes are not clearly seen to offer the kind of innovative use cases that deserve priority, and while Drive chains sound good in theory, their main problem is still that miners can eventually steal coins from them.
But even if Bitcoin Core developers are not interested, that does not mean that it is impossible to update Bitcoin. For better or worse, anyone with the right skill set (admittedly not a very low bar) can install a soft fork through another client, even a human activated soft fork -use (UASF). However, despite a few rumors from time to time, no one has done this yet.
I suspect this is at least partly because the proponents of these soft forks are not convinced that UASF would be successful. And if UASF wasn't successful, the upgrade might not be worth doing in the first place…
This article is a Take. The views expressed are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
