...but there must be some sort of controlled development effort?
If people say "Bitcoin may not support x but may do in the future".
then...
Who develops x?
How do they let the world know?
How would the miners agree to implement it?
A decentralized model is great but am struggling to see how this works when developing new functionality.
anyone can develop bitcoin wallets.. but its the other people (general public) that choose to download it. then if over 50% of general public use this different wallet because it is better. and has some protocol rule changes that are better than what bitcoin-core has. then this new wallet will be the protocol.
EG imagine bitcoin-core version 1 update had a code that says 20% of all coins go to satoshi's old hoard address.. no one would like that and people wont download it. instead they would stick with 0.9 or wait for someone else to make their own or take the version 1, but remove the satoshi tax code, so that the update is fixed of any known 0.9 bugs, but dosn not contain the tax code. then everyone will download that version.
at the moment bitcoin-core, made by the current team is accepted, because so far they have not done anything nasty. thus people go with it. but if you can do something better that has no nasty code in it. people will choose yours instead.
you should know that a large percent will use the default offical client no matter what
say 60% do, if the changes are very small and incremental its conceivable after many years the client can implent a bitcoin tax to the govt
just like how the govt started the income tax after a war, they started at 1% on only the very rich so that they wont get much opposition from the poor and middle class
now its double digit percentage and applies to most people
the saying goes the way to boil a frog is to heat it in water very very slowly, otherwise it would just jump out
the govt can say we just need a small fraction of the transaction fee to goto the govt's bitcoin address because they need to fund a war against al quaeda (usa cia created and funded boogie man group) on the top 1% of larges transaction fees
then in the future once most of the people are on compliant clients and its commly accepted fact that govt is taxing bitcoin they turn up the tax percentage
