I've walked myself in some weird circles thinking about this. I think you had an episode with John Carvalho a while back and I really find myself falling back to his position (or what I think is his position is)
Discussion
I just hate gatekeeping beyond a reasonable point
Some tech has been around for many years, has been tested on altcoins or testnets, but due to politics we’re not gonna get it.
I definitely get that. My biggest annoyance in the bitcoin space is when someone says they expect X outcome, but all their actions are Y. If they said they wanted X and did X things, or Y and Y things, I'd be fine with it. The contradictions just annoy me.
Anyway, no matter what you want to do, no matter how optimized and tested it is, will get shot down by a dozen people saying “there is no consensus” and a couple of Core maintainers who won’t merge anything “controversial”.
You're probably right. I don't realistically see anything getting through without some crisis prompting it.