Mike Hearn was saying recently that ONLY Gavin was working on protocol stuff, mostly focusing on floating fees. Any major changes to the core protocol will happen very slowly if that's the case.

There's only a dozen major pools. Would be nice to have 50+ pools where one does not exceed 10% share in order to avoid a protocol-based solution. Seems a far way off, unfortunately.

GHash have proven there is a valid business model that other pools can adopt and erode GHash's share. *fingers crossed*