If the core team were to be compromised in the future, we could be looking at a situation on par with the BTC/Blockstream drama.
Fortunately the risks are presently low, but given increasing value on the chain and enough time, the $5 wrench attack ( if all else fails ) becomes inevitable. This is a purely speculative potential risk we're talking about, but one which bears constant attention. Secret canaries, exchanged amongst the core on a p2p basis would defend against many cases, but be annoying to maintain ( e.g. dead man canaries ).