How so? I thought the "Bitcoin" project still holding up under ticker BTC used PoW still and that this was one of the main arguments for why it was the real Bitcoin. You know, "the chain with the most PoW".

Also, operators of hashing nodes (aka solominers and pools) are major businesses within the chain based ecosystem. If you think a new design based on the idea that they shouldn't have influence is viable, I'm not sure what you're smoking frankly.

UASF is only the illusion either of democracy or optionality. In practice, it provides neither; Node count is easy to spoof with sockpuppets and "backwards compatibility" in transaction quality is not a feature of secure cryptocurrencies. Hence why such features are not a part of the Bitcoin design .