Taproot brought in schnorr signatures which…

Taproot brought in schnorr signatures which is used by nostr. So arguably without taproot, we might not have had nostr.

Drivechain is a proposal to create a side chain where the miners hold the coins and control the deposits. Its imho a very insecure proposal on top of bitcoin's secure base. Generally not liked, apart from a vocal minority.

The question arises on how to activate forks for new software, and also what happens if there's a relatively hostile miner fork, that the ecosystem doesnt want, or even a secret fork by the miners. The community is working through these possibilities, and I think has become more resilient.

On the topic of spam, it was always possible in bitcoin. We have not developed good defenses to it, aside from the fact that the previous block size increases were relatively modest, allowing a decentralized network of nodes.

One good thing of the discussions is that everyone seems to agree that decentralizing mining with stratumv2 is a good idea. This could lead to higher security for bitcoin, and therefore, higher price. As well as a longer life for the project, which everyone wants.