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.
<1%, it's very competitive. But that's a feature not a bug, users shouldn't have to pay a lot for privacy, or to move money to/from a sidechain quickly.
I assumed the margin wouldn't be high from looking at the order book. I wonder more about the volume one can expect.
The Bitcoin mainnet doesn't care. That's why it's easier -- miners can openly attack the sidechain without anybody really caring.
We'd care if there was an attack on a sidechain because then we'd lose useful functionality that makes bitcoin worth more, even if you or I don't use that feature.
Perhaps, but the fundamental value of having minimal base layer functionality is that it insulates Bitcoin from attacks on the upper layers. There is always an implicit security trade-off when you use an off-chain or sidechain mechanism because they aren't secured by the Bitcoin mainchain consensus. We should keep that in mind when considering the value these upper layers represent, especially in their early alpha/beta phases.