Paul’s demeanor was a concern for me too, especially talking about a MASF and secret softforks.

I’ve listened to hours of Paul talking, and determined he is a very frustrated nerd. He has even compared Bitcoin code to Dragon Ball Z 😂

Paul never had any intention to do a "secret softfork". He told everyone this is possible, and nobody knew before he said it. The dubious thing would be to do it in secret.

I’ve come to realized a MASF is a sort of check on powers. Right now, if thousands of people want drivechains, we’re stuck with the Core developers to decide what philosophy Bitcoin should follow. Did you know Taproot was implemented with something called a "Speedy Trial"? Nobody complained about that, because the "experts" said it would be fine.

Softforks cannot kill Bitcoin. This is not something we should be concerned with. If Bitcoin is that fragile, then in the future we could be one softfork away from destroying the economy. Softforks are backwards compatible and give you the freedom to opt-out, which is the individual liberty Bitcoin provides.