Like most breakthrough tech, almost every protocol will eventually achieve 99% reliability. Getting there isn't rocket science—once teams solve the core mechanics, they hit diminishing returns fast. But here's where it gets brutal: that final stretch, the 99.99999X% part, separates pretenders from real players. The long tail of edge cases? It's a nightmare. Most projects cruise through the easy wins, then realize they're stuck in the hardest 1%. That's where months of engineering turn into years. The gap between "mostly works" and "enterprise-grade" isn't just incremental improvement—it's a completely different beast. Every decimal point costs exponentially more time, resources, and obsessive testing.