I have a theory that a lot of what's driving the shitcoinery at Bitcoin Core is simply the "low impact death spiral" - adding small things that are seemingly low risk and clear/assured value, but small. These pileup and the product becomes a mess, core mission diluted. Failing.
Allowing other use cases and catering to people who ask for "small" change, is an easy way to deliver "value".
Where, for people wanting to make an impact within bitcoin L1, there isn't really any easy, risk-free value to add - so why risk it? Why do the hard thing?
It's a lot less sexy and rewarding to just be a maintainer. Most people want to build, make an impact, deliver change, be recognised for doing something great, put it on their CV and wear it with honour.
Working with affinity scam projects, is a way to do that:
A lot of people genuinely think those DeFi use cases are valuable, and for early-stage bitcoin maximalist, the idea of moving everything onto bitcoin to beat all the other alt coins is an AMAZING idea! "Yeah, let's put it all on bitcoin cos then alts go away and bitcoin wins!"
So, if you can help make that a reality, why wouldn't you? It's an easy way to deliver value and LOADS of people will applaud you for it.
It takes work to understand why this isn't a good thing, and people don't like doing work
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Money is broken, we need to stay laser-focused on fixing it, and not getting distracted by sparkly things along the way
