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Weird analogies aside, I think you can still see where I'm getting at though. There are definitely other coins out there that are improving on Bitcoins current flaws like block sizes, fungibility, other properties on a blockchain, etc. For the development on Bitcoin to remain stagnant just because it is the most valued currently doesn't mean that is a good thing.
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Bitcoin itself is constantly improving. Transaction capacity will be increased in a much better way than via a pure blocksize increase shortly. There is also consistent improvement on the security side and new features that are attractive for 2nd layer technology are added as well. Bitcoin has the biggest and most active development community behind it. In my view it's much more likely that useful features of altcoins will be integrated into Bitcoin after they have passed the "beta test" via altcoin release, rather than that an altcoin will overturn Bitcoin's dominant position because of an innovative feature.
Personally I can't see that Bitcoin development is stagnating. However I agree that we need significant privacy enhancements as soon as possible, because there is an imminent danger of blacklisting coins and destroying fungibility due to ludicrous AML policies.
ya.ya.yo!
The thing is, even though that what you said is the most logical thing for what the devs
should do (since there are a good amount of devs working on Bitcoin Core), it probably won't happen primarily because there is no direct way to govern this at all. What seems to be happening, at least to me, is that while Bitcoin might be stronger in every since of the word as it stands right now; it's harder and harder to innovate and change Bitcoin... Why? Because there is no direct way to govern
and you will always get resistance from a good portion of the devs because they feel that their idea is better, and so there needs to be a vote. Should you give miners the ability to vote? Well, that doesn't really make much since because miners usually don't have such a strong incentive to do
anything really to how Bitcoin functions, just as long as they can make money and profit. There is just no real way to govern and make a community decision that will make the overall majority happy and not want to fork.
This gets us into the territory of altcoins, and people doing what they want to do on their own coin. Now, let's just assume Bitcoin adds Mimblewimble in some 2nd chain thing, and now let's just say 30-35% of people using Bitcoin as of now are pissed because the governments are pissed of a more anon solution to Bitcoin which makes it harder to track certain payments (that's if Mimblewimble really works). Those people really want Bitcoin to be a
public form of transacting money, and so they create, let's say Bitcoin Classic (heheh)...
Point being is that it's kind of ridiculous to say that everyone will just stay with Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is first and it's the only coin that
really matters. Sure, Bitcoin was first, but that doesn't mean that it won't fail do to some flaw in code or governance problem. Let's all remember that
Bitcoin is still a relatively new and experimental payment system, and no matter how much people think it's already some kind of "gold standard" that will never fail, it's not and there's still a possibility.
