Summer of Protocols

“Protocols do not promote excellence, they prevent disasters.”

I don't want to believe that. 

Sounds rather like the pitch for democracy.

This is the alt account of Sister Hazel. Writings at https://powerlaw.systems. Building https://testnet.uvio.network. 

Likewise. If we can find an example of a protocol that creates excellence, that would be great evidence

I think you touched on it here - protocols prevent disasters, markets surface excellence? Downside can be engineered out of a system (kind of) upside is the result of experiments with different trade-offs... something like that

I am not sure how you would frame or cut it in order to call it a protocol, but Ethereum creates excellence in terms of value extraction, read MEV.

Maybe every market is designed to surface excellence based on its tradeoff distribution.

How would you think about that?