one thing that take people a while to internalize is how social contracts are really the void which binds a protocol. 

standards, smart contracts, blockchains etc are all important pieces that make it harder to break these contracts casually, but do not make it impossible. 

if you have sufficient social consensus you can break all of them (see DAO fork, Bitcoin Cash fork etc)

at this point i'm not even sure which quotation is more relevant here, the 
Dude from Lebowski or Lao Tzu, but this time i'd go with the dude's one cuz 

"that void really ties the protocol together" y'know