Bitcoin blockchain was made to be public information, if we start obfuscating transactions then the community will divide, and then the fork will come. That's why I think these silent payments should be focused on a new coin and not be implemented in bitcoin.
It looks like btc will go closer to what Monero was am I right? The problem I see with that is Monero was limited in growth because of the mass bans probably because of KYC. If Bitcoin implements silent payments to increase privacy (Woo!) would this put us at risk of meeting the same fate as Monero? or are we too big?
I do not think any exchange can decide not to accept bitcoin become it will have side effect on the exchange, it is true that the transparent bitcoin blockchain helps in adoption but exchanges can decide to accept only on-chain transaction if they want transparent. Even, in a lightning network payment, only what is most transparent is when opening and closing a channel, lightning payment transaction nis not also recorded on blockchain.
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.
Why? From the blockchain's perspective, nothing changes. It will just show a transaction from address A to address B, and it doesn't matter how the owner of address B gave their address to the owner of address A.
But silent payment will not be transparent as it is not even existing on blockchain at all and the public will know about the transaction. The payment will not be traceable.
If this can be like a layer 2, it will be betyer, in a way there will be a bridge between silent payment and on-chain transaction just like lightning network.