There is one fly in the ointment of curing the altcoin disease with pegged side coins.
Users will use a side chain for features they like, but there is 0 direct incentive for them to use a side chain to get a higher ROI on their investment.
Thus those who want to maximize ROI of some new feature such as for example on chain anonymity (off chain anonymity is untenable), will prefer to buy the altcoin version of the feature assuming that altcoin has a superior adoption curve to Bitcoin (remember smaller things grow faster on percentage basis).
And especially if that altcoin has an ecosystem that refuses to accept BTC directly because it is recognized that Bitcoin is a NWO paradigm wherein the future is Coinbase, Circle, Paypal, Facebook, etc will move their zombie masses onto a pegged side chain they control with a centralized ledger, with full compliance government KYC required on all transactions. The masses don't care. They already completed the KYC requirement when they joined those sites.
It will come down to a war over anonymity. Bitcoin gets the non-anonymous world. Another altcoin will vie for the anonymous world if it is done correctly. The key will be driving anonymous usage and thus adoption.
One could argue that an anonymous side chain would suffice for users of anonymity, but this depends on the usage of anonymity. If all you are doing is storing value, then you plan to cash out via BTC, then that isn't going to drive much adoption as evident for Moanero.
But if you've got an ecosystem for anonymity that has investors and operators who refuse to accept BTC then such an ecosystem can outpace Bitcoin's percentage growth and thus ROI for investors.
Why would investors and operators of an anonymity ecosystem refuse to accept BTC? Because they'd be shooting their own foot in terms of their investment in the altcoin with a higher growth rate. They'd be siphoning off their own network effects and diluting them into the larger monolith of BTC chains. It is a simple economic calculation. One can assume that anonymous operators will be intelligent, otherwise they wouldn't be interested in anonymity.
Users will use a side chain for features they like, but there is 0 direct incentive for them to use a side chain to get a higher ROI on their investment.
Thus those who want to maximize ROI of some new feature such as for example on chain anonymity (off chain anonymity is untenable), will prefer to buy the altcoin version of the feature assuming that altcoin has a superior adoption curve to Bitcoin (remember smaller things grow faster on percentage basis).
And especially if that altcoin has an ecosystem that refuses to accept BTC directly because it is recognized that Bitcoin is a NWO paradigm wherein the future is Coinbase, Circle, Paypal, Facebook, etc will move their zombie masses onto a pegged side chain they control with a centralized ledger, with full compliance government KYC required on all transactions. The masses don't care. They already completed the KYC requirement when they joined those sites.
It will come down to a war over anonymity. Bitcoin gets the non-anonymous world. Another altcoin will vie for the anonymous world if it is done correctly. The key will be driving anonymous usage and thus adoption.
One could argue that an anonymous side chain would suffice for users of anonymity, but this depends on the usage of anonymity. If all you are doing is storing value, then you plan to cash out via BTC, then that isn't going to drive much adoption as evident for Moanero.
But if you've got an ecosystem for anonymity that has investors and operators who refuse to accept BTC then such an ecosystem can outpace Bitcoin's percentage growth and thus ROI for investors.
Why would investors and operators of an anonymity ecosystem refuse to accept BTC? Because they'd be shooting their own foot in terms of their investment in the altcoin with a higher growth rate. They'd be siphoning off their own network effects and diluting them into the larger monolith of BTC chains. It is a simple economic calculation. One can assume that anonymous operators will be intelligent, otherwise they wouldn't be interested in anonymity.
I remember watching Adam Back's talk about this concept when he was in Israel at a meeting I think sponsored by Meni Rosenfeld.
In any case, the concept is sort of inane. Who ever receives a payment can trace all the way back through the chain of payment history of obscured amounts. So afaics the anonymity breaks down over time to eventually 0. Please correct me if I am mistaken.
Also in the linked text from Maxell, he claims that ring sigs need a forever expanding high bloated unscalable block chain. I have solved that problem.
The main problem side chains has introduced for me, is they can steal my technology and put it in a side chain. So I will just have to put it in a side chain first and make sure I am siphoning value from BTC in a way that can't technologically be improved upon. I know how to do this because it was already necessary in my design.
So everything is falling right into place for me. Monero has eventually been co-opted by side chains (unfortunately).
In any case, the concept is sort of inane. Who ever receives a payment can trace all the way back through the chain of payment history of obscured amounts. So afaics the anonymity breaks down over time to eventually 0. Please correct me if I am mistaken.
I think I conflated with the "respendable commited-tx". The homomorphic encryption was 5 slides above that. So perhaps the HE does not have the flaw I assumed. So it hides payment amounts but doesn't mix outputs from numerous entities. You'd still need CoinJoin for that, which is unscalable. And if you add on-chain ring sigs, then you don't need the HE. Also I don't understand how hiding the amount helps when the amount needs to be same for all those who are mixing in CoinJoin
(otherwise analysis of permutations between input and output amounts can decrease the anonymity set).So far this looks like another one of those half-baked Gregory Maxwell ideas.
I await clarification.Links:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=509674.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=305791.0