Good protocols tend to form persistent Schelling points in spaces of problems worth solving, around solutions good enough to live with – for a while. And surprisingly often, they manage to induce more complex patterns of voluntary commitment and participation than are achieved by competing systems of centralized coordination.
"inducing more complex patterns" reminds me a little bit of Peter Cotton's Microprediction, does a market form around an idea? Is a protocol one of these ideas?
Appreciate the 'problems worth solving'
Because it's fresh in memory, I like this as illustrated by Chasing Venus