That is certainly a cool idea, but how would a system like that cope with getting "wires crossed"? The nice thing about standard protocols (a form of consensus)

That is certainly a cool idea, but how would a system like that cope with getting "wires crossed"? The nice thing about standard protocols (a form of consensus) is that there is a schema and at least at the transport level, there are no unambiguous values. Without consensus, you have the risk of party A saying something, and party B interprets it in a different way than intent.