I just dont see it in sidechain, any sidechain features are limited by the reliance on Bitcoins POW Merge Mining, true innovation will be multifaceted, something a spin-off could seed.
As for all the other endless opportunities, I see Open Transaction doing a better job in a trust less environment on top of (with) Bitcoin.   

get ready to ask your Q's!

Mr. Back and Mr. Maxwell will hold an AMA (“ask me anything”) session on the popular social network site Reddit Thursday.

updated list

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2k1ayi/adam_back_greg_maxwell_and_pieter_wuille_will_be/

Either your risk reward sucks or you picked the wrong place to put your money... you would be a bad financial advisor.

SC's are still just an idea.  just like TC's and Ethereum.  until they get a working implementation going, alts are gonna hang around.

and it's still not clear whether SC's get off the ground.  there are alot of unhappy ppl cuz of the for-profit company these guys represent and the power to push code of their choice to maximize that profit.

Perhaps your notion of why altcoins have value is incorrect.

For example, one reason Litecoin has been described as having value is as a hedge against something going very wrong with Bitcoin (both technology-wise and economic/ecosystem-wise). Given that side chains are totally unproven, with uncertain effects, it is entirely possible that Litecoin could go rationally go up in value due to side chains.

Also, I'm not convinced that the true version of side chains (that requires a hard fork) is inevitable. More likely than yesterday I would agree.

Also, let's not forget that this for-profit company has scooped up several of the top Bitcoin developers. That could be good or bad for the rest of Bitcoin. I'm sure they would argue (both individually as a business) it will only be good. I'm not entirely sold on that premise.

Yes, lots of linear thinking going on over in the sidechain camp. I keep bringing up the possible negative effects of a sidechain losing 20 to 30% of all btc and all they can say is "that will just make my coin worth more!".

one reason Litecoin has been described as having value is as a hedge against something going very wrong with Bitcoin

-- I never understood the hedge argument for litecoin. If something goes wrong with bitcoin, why wouldn't it also go wrong with litecoin? After all they share the majority of their code.

let's not forget that this for-profit company has scooped up several of the top Bitcoin developers.

-- We don't know who scooped up who - though I guess we could ask in the AMA tomorrow. The point I was making is that they are a part of this project, which to me is a major indicator of the probability of the success of this project getting incorporated into the code.

1. You ignored this part: "both technology-wise and economic/ecosystem-wise." That could include all manner of things that have little to nothing to do with existing code, including mining centralization, bad decisions by core developers, bad influences by existing or new commercial interests, too cozy with regulators, too hostile to regulators, being the target of a deliberate attack simply because it is bigger, etc.

2. Let's not forget that Bitcoin is vastly more valuable than Litecoin or anything else. Thus a market-impled hedge suggests that such a result is very unlikely, but not zero. Overall I think Bitcoin is around 90% of the total cryptocoin market cap (LTC is <10%). We are arguing about an edge case, but all this "sidechains/altchains are better than altcoins" argument is trying to do after all is drive down that 10%, which is pretty small to begin with. Can you really, with 90%+ confidence, say that nothing could go seriously wrong with Bitcoin that wouldn't somehow benefit some other coin? I think the answer is no, with or without side chains, but perhaps you disagree.


I agree with you that this milestone has increased the probability of side chains being developed and deployed. It is a conceptual leap go from that fairly obvious fact to what the eventual outcome might be.

Not without better vetting of the cryptography, which would likely take years.

Correction: I didn't realize they are proposing the SPV-proof method for coin return rather than the zkSNARK method.

Given that, cryptography is a lesser concern, though I would be still be concerned about mining incentives (which aren't that well understood for even Bitcoin itself).

The summary is that I really don't know if this is a good idea. I'd want to see much more careful analysis first.