It's more like regular shared libraries. You can replace a library with a different one that loads the original library, defines the same symbols, and forwards

It's more like regular shared libraries. You can replace a library with a different one that loads the original library, defines the same symbols, and forwards the function calls. That's how debugging/protocol inspection tools like 6Jack work, and it's pretty convenient. It could be done with static libraries, but that would require renaming all the symbols of the upstream library.