Game theory is all in favor of the dev tax, Don't compare it to Bitcoin because as you said, Bitcoin has that network effect, dev tax is major for a project survival the first few years before it proves viable and gains community and the same people that trash altcoins refuse to let change to happen in the first layer of Bitcoin. there is no way that MW,cut-through and fly client and all the great tech would be implemented in Bitcoin layer1.

In fact, Blockstream go trashing every project out there, they try to shame any innovation because of "bad designs/centralization" but when they do it it is fine, they went and developed liquid which is a federated centralized chain with a shitcoin token and called it Bitcoin 1.5 ...it is just ridiculous. read this thread.