Unloading of the blockchain for txs that don't need to be persisted forever in the main blockchain. Helping scalability. Which seems to be a bit of a deal these days (more because of fabricated crises than reality, but it's the way it is). Improvements are always welcome to me.
Agreed, and bit of a miscommunication I suppose: "big deal?" as in "what's the panic about?"
The XT narrative is that we are about to collapse because of capacity problems. This undermines that fabricated crisis narrative. This is why you'll see an incredibly negative reception of this development in the XT sub and by the XT brigade.
Well, since I'm mostly on the sideline of the XT issue (because I don't consider max block a significant enough economic factor), I'll add that the protocol literalists have spun a respectable number of fabricated crisis narratives themselves (uncontrollable spam, lack of LT mining reward, etc.). IMO, it replaces one potential pitfall (mostly technical) with another one (mostly psychological): turning the Blockchain into a pure high-stake clearing network before it had a chance to establish itself as a useful, reliable tool for smaller transactions is not without risk either.