If you're going to hodl for 6+ months anyways, then why not collect some fees on top of that like a JoinMarket maker?
Is there any recent discussion of how much JoinMarket makers can expect to earn? It's crossed my mind, but I'd like to gauge the expected gains vs. the risk of keeping private keys online.
Paul Sztorc admits it is true
here... increasing the withdrawal requirement to 13,150 ACKs.
No, he doesn't and it wouldn't matter if he does. But you are misreading his faq comment. I'm not discussing Drivechain project or its devs' opinions, anyway. As of 13,150 ACKs, they became poisoned by the "51% theft security whole" hoax and ruined their project by such stupid decisions. My proposal: let's put it on 200 ACKs and observe that there will be no theft for the next couple of decades.
I would love to see that. Chances are that the sidechain would end up holding very little value, commensurate with the mining security. There's no point attacking a worthless chain.
Nobody really cares about the viability of sidechains. Unlike Bitcoin, miners don't have strong incentives against attacking them.
And FYI, from a game-theoretic perspective, it is a hell "harder" to steal a penny from sidechains compared to the mainnet. Double-spending is a covert operation and mainnet full-nodes are absolutely blind about it, but sidechain full nodes will detect the theft at the moment it is happening.
Just like merge-mined altcoins, the only people who would care are holders of the altcoin. The Bitcoin mainnet doesn't care. That's why it's easier -- miners can openly attack the sidechain without anybody really caring.
BTC.com colluded in a 51% attack on Bitcoin Cash last year. As one of the largest Bitcoin mining pools, their reputation doesn't seem to have suffered all that much.