The bitcoin community has never lived in harmony: there have always been disagreements regarding different aspects of bitcoin, namely how bitcoin should work: block size war, what bitcoin should be: a store of value or medium of exchange, and what is more important: adoption at all costs by flirting with governments and corrupt banksters or self-sovereignty of individual users who value being free and independent. There have always been compliant and non-compliant people; there have always been people who understand the importance of privacy and who don't care because "they have nothing to hide"; there have always been people who despise KYC/AML useless regulations and who readily give up everything to gain a small yield. This community has many faces merely because bitcoin is for enemies and friends, for villains and heroes; it's for everyone because it doesn't judge.

As for silent payments, they won't make blockchain less transparent; blockchain will remain public, open, and accessible for everyone to subjectively interpret transactions occurring inside it. Let us not confuse "transparency and openness" with "KYCed transactions" where the identities of both the sender and receiver are known to the world. If the privacy of transactions is compromised by attaching KYC information of participants, bitcoin can no longer be a censorship-resistant and decentralized network. These things simply can't work without one another.  Silent payments may help users protect their right to privacy, which is the right to "selectively reveal yourself to the world."