BTW, I remember being so worried about Hearn achieving his long-term dream of killing Bitcoin through unlimited growth that I thought up some way to deal with the threat and bought a domain name in...whois...04/2013. One of my first posts on this board back in 2011 proposed subordinate chains as a the most tangible and workable solution to the obvious scaling issues.
This is what makes the Blockstream conflict of interest situation so interesting. Everyone involved legitimately believed this was a good idea long before they had a corporate bias and a logo.
I'm at least as sensitive as most people to organizational structures. When I heard of Blockstream organized under a corporate structure I had to put a little thought into how I felt about it. After doing so, I concluded that it probably would be the most workable and effective way to achieve a result.
When I heard about Blockstream and their focus, and especially to who the participants were, I was overcome with delight. I would not give a shit if it were organized under any structure as long as there was good transparency. When Linked-in was a new thing I was somewhat negative about it due to the potential for abuse. Social media generally was in a much less well developed state but the threats were obvious and troubling. Having the participation of whats-his-name Linked-in guy was a mild pinkish flag to me, but I will always be watching them with a wary eye no matter what. I cannot say that I am keenly aware of any gross negligence on the part of Linked-in observed over the last decade and a half.
For historical reference, I put the same level of thought into the Bitcoin Foundation when it was under consideration. I concluded that the risks were greater than the potential rewards (and said so.) I made a point of calling transparency into the picture and that is one of the areas where TBF failed miserably in actual practice.
Back to Blockstream and it's corporate structure, I would note that it might have some potential benefits. Under TPP (and surely the upcoming TAP) corporate structures have access to adjudication in international cases and Bitcoin is certainly international. Of course the judicial tribunals report under the U.N. security council so it is unlikely that a monetary solution which competes with whatever the bankster class favors will get much of a fair shake, but a corporate structure might provide some relief from certain kinds of action-packed nation-state abuse (of the type which Kim Dotcom got bothered by.)