Too Long; Didn't Read
Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchain ecosystems both spend far more on network security than they do on everything else combined. Bitcoin ecosystem expenditures on R&D are likely even lower.
The last 20% of network hash power provides vastly less value to the ecosystem than those same resources would if they had gone into research and core protocol development.
It's a social force that underlies all sorts of extremely powerful mechanisms far beyond the blockchain space. As we are going to see, it's also the same social force behind why the Bitcoin ecosystem is capable of summoning up these resources.