An interesting thought experiment: imagine bitcoin's price didn't appreciate and there was no mining subsidy or tx fees paid to miners as part of the protocol. How decentralized would bitcoin be? It could be decentralized and censorship resistant if many miners found their own way to pay for the energy and equipment to mine, or did it for goodwill. It could have many wallets and L2's if non-miners were also intrinsically motivated to make them. In such a case the protocol doesn't need to change, merely the people do.