Yes, I think there is a lot of room for better protocols that reduce the asymmetry. A lot of our internet is built on protocols that assumed good behavior, sinc

Yes, I think there is a lot of room for better protocols that reduce the asymmetry. A lot of our internet is built on protocols that assumed good behavior, since back in the 70s and 80s and even 90s that was plausible. But I don’t think we will ever get to a point where we bring that asymmetry to zero. We often really do want complex tasks to be done by a server in response to a simple client request. Software people rarely put this asymmetry in the front of their minds during design, so I think its something we will continue to see in new systems, even if we (magically) universally adopted better versions of the old, too-trusting protocols.