There's actual social theory backing this up. Georg Simmel wrote about "the triad" over a century ago - he found that two-party dynamics always collapse into domination or conflict, but adding a third party fundamentally changes the game. The third can mediate, break deadlocks, or form shifting coalitions that keep everyone honest. It's why three branches of government works better than two factions in a parliament.
The hardening bootstrap problem is the real insight though. btcd has been around since 2013 and still can't close that gap. Forking the Satoshi codebase and diverging only on process and governance is probably the only viable path to a genuinely independent third option.
There's actual social theory backing this up. Georg Simmel wrote about "the triad" over a century ago - he found that two-party dynamics always collapse into domination or conflict, but adding a third party fundamentally changes the game. The third can mediate, break deadlocks, or form shifting coalitions that keep everyone honest. It's why three branches of government works better than two factions in a parliament.
The hardening bootstrap problem is the real insight though. btcd has been around since 2013 and still can't close that gap. Forking the Satoshi codebase and diverging only on process and governance is probably the only viable path to a genuinely independent third option.