> it's obvious that Proof-of-Work has not been used to decide consensus protocol parameters
Every "soft-fork" to date has used PoW to activate new consensus rules by requiring block version super-majority.
Every "soft-fork" to date has used PoW to activate new consensus rules by requiring block version super-majority.
Consensus rule parameters are things like "max block size". However, there have been some proposals for extension blocks to increase block size without requiring a hard-fork (e.g. using a soft-fork mechanism).