I rarely post anything on the forums because I dont speak English as fluently as I want, but this situation is an extraordinary case, so I think I cant resist the temptation to write about it in my broken English

What happened with all this Blockstream, BIPs & XT mess is just a solid presentation of Bitcoins weakest sides and flaws.
Here are three main problems that I see:
1. Blockstream is a cancer for BitcoinPersonally, I cant (or I dont want to) believe that just $21M, which Blockstream has got from a bunch of investors, will actually ruin Bitcoin as we know it now. The problem is that many people just dont understand the simplest thing: if someone has invested the money in something, they want to get it back in the future. So one way or another, Blockstream is a commercial company, which wants to benefit from the Lightning Network (or the sidechains).
It is absolutely obvious that the smaller the block size is, the more money Blockstream will make. Lets theorize for a moment, that BIP100 has been implemented and miners have voted for 1 KB blocks, so 1 block = 1 transaction. That would be the perfect situation for Blockstream, because as they can take fees in the LN, they would be the only entity who is economically motivated to pay a very big fee for creating a clearing transaction in the blockchain. So the entire blockchain from this moment would consist of single clearing transactions.
Now lets get back to the ground and suppose that we will have 1 MB or 2 MB, or even 10 MB blocks implemented by BIP100, but this size will not rise in the future. Well, now it all depends on how big will Bitcoin grow. If in 2020 we will have 1.000.000 transactions each 10 minutes and the same 1 MB blocks, the calculation is simple and not really different from 1 KB blocks. Lets suppose that Blockstream will get $0.05 for each transaction on the LN as a fee, so for a million LN-transactions the total fee would be $50.000. Now, if Blockstream will use the blockchain for the clearing transactions, they could use the entire 1 MB (~1.500 transactions) for this purpose. $50.000 1.500 transactions = $33 per transaction. So no one will have an incentive to push a transaction for $33 in the blockchain while there will be an option to use a sidechain for $0.05. I understand that these calculations are awfully approximate, but this is the economic model of Blockstream. And this is the end of Bitcoins be your own bank as we know it know, because Blockstream is a centralized thing, you know: Sorry, you are banned from the Lightning Network because you havent verified your ID.
And I have another thought about Blockstream I cant stop think about. How in the world do you think they have convinced the investors (who merely understand technical details of Bitcoin protocol) that sidechains is what is needed for Bitcoin? Right, they said exactly the following: Bitcoin has a flow: the block size is limited and cant be increased, because its hardcoded. We solve this problem!. Now its not surprising that investors must be puzzled about whats going on now with all this FUD, because they werent told that there were other solutions. And thats exactly why there is so many censorship on the main Bitcoin boards nowadays: if the investors realize that people dont want to use sidechains, they will not invest more money. Since the Blockstream team consists of the Cores developers
Its that simple.
2. It is not that obvious who decides the future for Bitcoin. Despite the fact that in theory it is the economic majority who should decide the future for Bitcoin, miners still can destroy it in the processMany people theorize that the majority of miners will not do anything stupid (like accepting 1 KB block size limit or raising the 21M bitcoins limit) because the price will momentarily go down to zero and the miners will lose their money. Yes, they will. And you will too. Or may be they do something stupid and the price will just slightly go down. The global problem is if for any reason in the world the majority would want to commit a suicide, they actually could do it. For example, they could be confused by the greedy guys like Blockstream
Anything. And there is literally nothing anyone could do to stop them.
3. The censorship on top of the fact that many people dont understand how Bitcoin (and the Bitcoin consensus in particular) worksWell, I was very confused when I got to know that Theymos was banning all the irrelevant discussions. I dont know whether he is paid by Blockstream or he isnt, but thats not the problem. The problem is that here in the Russian section there are almost no discussions about the Blockstream problem at all! Everybody just thinks that Bitcoin XT will ruin Bitcoin, because it is a fork, so the best option is to sit still and have 1 MB blocks. Thats all. And thats because all articles here in the Russian section are translated from the western media. So the people who doesnt speak English just cant dig into the problem.
And, in my opinion, the problem is not with the Russian section. I believe that there can be a similar problem in the Chinese one. And this problem is a real one, because all top miners are from China.
I dont know what can I do about itWell, I believe if XT wont succeed and Blockstreams solution will get accepted, I will have only one option: to sell my coins, as it is the only way I can vote. Thats sad, but I dont believe that sidechains are the true Bitcoin.
And as the conclusion, Id like to say that its all about corruption. Well, here we have corrupted Core developers, who develop a commercial project on top of Bitcoin. Bitcoin was invented as a replacement for traditional money to fix some economical problems. If you look at the big picture, it would be interesting to think, that at some point in time, fiat money (which were backed by gold) were invented to fix some problems too. And in time, some people corrupted the idea of fiat money with the current banking system. My point is that if Bitcoin can be broken by corrupted people, it will inevitably be broken. And my biggest fear it has already happened.
Let me clear up a little bit of your misconceptions since its evident truth hasn't made its way to your homeland yet!
1. They are currently participating on a voluntary basis to the development of the Lightning network. The lightning network being an open source development they have no proprietary advantage over its monetization. In fact, you should know the theory behind this protocol was NOT invented by Blockstream whose incorporation and 21 million $ funding round predates the announcement of the Lightning network by a full year. It was only recently following the hiring of developer Rusty Russel that Blockstream began their involvement with lightning development seeing as Rusty had shown previous interest in payment networks (he was working on a micro-transaction network before being hired). Out of a team of probably a dozen developers Rusty is the only one involved with Lightning work at Blockstream. You can find here the lightning development mailing list where you should realise a couple of different developers outside of Blockstream are collaborating to the development progress of this network :
. All this to say that Blockstream's economic model is evidently not based on the Lightning network and this development will not centralize the utility model of Bitcoin to their advantage.
2. On sidechains, you will find that they were scarcely advertised as a scaling solution for very good reason: they don't scale particularly well in their existing form. In fact, a little research should reveal to you that transactions between sidechains and the mainchains compete with regular transactions for space in blocks. It follows then that bigger blocks are advantageous to the development of sidechains and their scale. You should understand this particular bit of information defeats your argument.