I more or less agree that protocols are almost always preferable to platforms. Why though do you consider BTC/LN (and even a sizeable network of Nostr relays...) to be protocols but ethereum and smart contracts to be a platform?

Aren't they both as viable to run independently ("speak the protocol"), but both are susceptible to counterparty risk (if the Bitcoin network does something retarded like ordinals, say. Yea you could go nuclear fork the "protocol" part, but you lose the network and therefore the "platform")?

To me, the degree to which users of a protocol actually end up functionally beholden to a particular network is the degree to which it is more of a platform. Nostr itself is perfectly permissionlessly protocol-y. More so than any dApp that ethereum has churned out. Relays begin to blur that line a liiiiittle but they're still on the right side of it in my mind.