Yeah and I posit that @gmaxwell is going to be the spectator when it really matters.

Side-chains are fundamentally flawed and can't ever work securely. Lightning Networks can't work decentralized.

Perhaps Blockstream's Confidential Transactions (aka CT) might end up being an important technology but that is not clear yet. I may have devised a more efficient solution improving CCT (but it is also possible I have a math error in that work I did). CCT ≠ CT, they are two different technologies that have roughly the same functionality.

Cryptographers are specialists. But blockchains require also wider range of divergent thinking skills.