@Roger_Murdock
"Set in stone" is often stated without specifying agency, probably because English doesn't have a handy way of talking about emergent processes and many people also don't really understand them.
First we need to ask what the idea of protocol is really about.
"Protocol" is the name one gives to a set of rules intended to function as a base that never changes - where it may one day make sense to start anew, but never to fiddle, because the ruleset was chosen precisely such that the value of keeping the ruleset fixed will trump the value of even very substantial improvements.
As such, a well-designed protocol's strongest Schelling point - the ruleset that will be converged upon as conferring maximal value - is not to change except to avoid catastrophe or for some other enormously important reason. This is especially true for a money and contracting system, where builders on top of the protocol need to rely on their constructs working consistently 50+ years hence, and where changes invariably produce financial winners and losers. (Trying to avoid building anything that could be ruined if there were a protocol change is an exercise in futility as it pushes the problem into an even blurrier one of "Schelling point for type and scope of changes we can expect to ever be made," as well as heavily constraining what can be built.)
In short, the idea of "protocol" is that it is useful to have a certain subset of rules (governing a system) that can be counted on not to change within any time horizon relevant to the industry.
For the money, title, securities, etc., for contracts written for these industries, that time horizon is so long that a change to avert a catastrophic issue is the only one likely to ever be adopted.
Core's meddling (and even Satoshi's temporary blocksize limit) in Bitcoin obscures the issue.
Clearly the setting in stone, due to accidents of history, can now not be instantly achieved; however these complications shouldn't be allowed to distract from the points that
1) setting in stone would be highly beneficial, if there is any reason for Bitcoin to have a protocol in the above-described sense
2) once it is set, any further change has an essentially unmeetable bar (save catastrophic situations), and
3) a protocol conferring the original functionality (as far as possible; there are some things that cannot be undone without screwing people, further underscoring the point!) is a very strong Schelling point
One can say Protocol A isn't well-designed and should be replaced by Protocol B, especially if the standard is not yet widely used.
But to have it be a goal of a protocol to be flexible and adopt optimizations even when the system is "good enough" at its purpose, and is widely used, is paradoxical. It defeats the very purpose of having a protocol.
Now, for BSV specifically, the general sentiment is that the functionality intended in the protocol of Bitcoin 0.1 is actually far better designed than most think, and can do far more - in fact essentially everything any altcoin can do. It's certainly understandable that those who disagree on this point would, given the still up-in-the-air nature of Bitcoin's meager adoption (whichever ledger), say, "Just a few more optimizations before the ossification completes!" What isn't understandable is to have a so-called "protocol" that just keeps changing, with no eye toward solidification within a realistic timeframe (think halvings, we don't have years to fiddle around). Having a protocol does mean sacrificing one class of potential improvements, and even if that weren't the case I still haven't seen or heard of anything that sounds like a real protocol improvement, let alone one worth breaking all existing user wallets for.
Note also that wallets will soon mean much more than wallets, more like entire authentication systems for...everything. And the protocol's need to be set in stone is
already affecting many decisions (can't remove CLTV as who knows who has relied on it up to now), with BSV's relative limited "setting in stone" up to now and the interest of its miners in doing so already driving a Cambrian explosion in apps built on top of the protocol in less than half a year.
The unwriter is just the tip of the iceberg. Building on a solid foundation seems to be a massive hit with developers.
Let's not also forget how legality plays into this. A protocol that continues to change will be seen by governments for what Core has proven that it is: a vehicle for control by developers. Core was never about refusing changes, they were about keeping themselves as the sole gatekeepers. They continue to draft protocol changes that subvert the original design, albeit more slowly than BCH. Whatever we think of the existing governments, unnecessarily "bringing it on," as Satoshi said, is pointless.
"You do not make a system that will change the world by finding the big, bad gorilla and kicking him in the fucking nuts!" -CSW
Even if there were no other reason, having a protocol in the true sense is valuable because it takes the One Ring and casts it into the lava.
