I’ve been digging into Bitcoin in my spare time, and it improved my understanding of the whole Bitcoin development process. Submitting changes and proposing new ideas ended up as hard as I expected it to be, but it’s possible to change stuff in reasonable time, if you can explain why it’s necessary.

The Bitcoin itself is a well-organized project maintained by a sizable group of experienced devs, but you shouldn’t have the same expectations about other core infrastructure projects in this space. Some of those projects are wild and chaotic, but it’s generally possible to make meaningful changes, although you might need to be more pushy.