Why I Became More Skeptical of “Flexible” Infrastructure
For a long time, I assumed flexibility was always a good thing.
If a system could adjust parameters, rewrite rules, or coordinate its way out of trouble, that felt like resilience. Over time, I started noticing the opposite pattern. The more flexible a system became under pressure, the harder it was to tell who was actually responsible for the outcome.
Flexibility doesn’t remove risk.
It often just postpones the moment when someone has to own it.
What made Plasma interesting to me is that it doesn’t try to soften that moment. Execution is constrained early. Behavior is defined before stress arrives. When something feels uncomfortable, the system doesn’t negotiate its way out. It follows through.
That sounds rigid, and it is.
But rigidity forces clarity.
I’ve learned that in systems moving real value, clarity tends to age better than optionality. You can price known behavior. You can’t price improvisation under stress.
Plasma doesn’t promise adaptability.
It promises that the rules won’t change just because things get hard.
For settlement infrastructure, that’s not a UX decision.
It’s a statement about where responsibility lives.
