If they built "trust-minimized BTC on a fully programmable Bitcoin layer," why not do staking and control or whatever-the-frack with bitcoin? Either:

1. it's not programmable/bridgeable enough with bitcoin to support a staking/voting protocol
   • their product isn't useful/good enough for them
2. they want to get rich quicker than building, or regardless of building, a "trust-minimized BTC on a fully programmable Bitcoin layer"
   • they have a high time preference

It sounds like (2), which they kind of obfuscate via incentives break otherwise without providing evidence.

As protocols evolve and their liquidity grows, the distribution of incentives becomes critical. Most foundations today make top-down decisions about where capital goes. As a result, incentives flow to short-term capital that farms rewards and exits. Active users and builders of the network watch their influence shrink as capital decisions are made top-down, beyond their control.

This could be a well-known phenomenon in altcoin protocols I guess, but to my ignorant ass it sounds a lot like "we need to profit sufficiently on speculative utility else we'll quit."