I think the complexity differences make the bigger differentiator.
Making updates to a protocol is slow because it requires consensus between its users. There's no agile quick iterations on a standard that requires updating 1000s of code bases for each iteration. On the other hand, if apple wants to make a breaking change to it's payments app, it can while only needing to make those changes in one place.
Sure, the incentives are misaligned, but the costs are even more misaligned
Making updates to a protocol is slow because it requires consensus between its users. There's no agile quick iterations on a standard that requires updating 1000s of code bases for each iteration. On the other hand, if apple wants to make a breaking change to it's payments app, it can while only needing to make those changes in one place.
Sure, the incentives are misaligned, but the costs are even more misaligned