From my perspective (going back a long ways) real sidechains such as liquid ARE 'bitcoin'.
I didn't mean that in the sense of anything negative, I mean you don't need to wonder about anything that complicated. The NFT/shitcoin stuff could just use some other much cheaper chain or whatever. They don't because reasons that I discussed upthread-- sidechains wouldn't help those reasons, they'd hurt. The value to the shitcoiner is that it's expensive to make their tokens.
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Yeah, OK. In a upthread search for what you mention, and other research and consideration, I'm now feeling neutral if not slightly favorable to the action. I find some of the details and actions (e.g., methods of limiting discussion) objectionable, and I've a lingering feeling that there are things on the horizon which remain among 'insiders', but it continues to be the case that I have more confidence in most of the 'insiders' than in most of other of the players to further my interests. For things like this, I usually favor pragmatism over idealism.
I disagree with taking controls away from the 'little people' (those who cannot patch and compile code to get what they have, rightly or wrongly, chosen to do.) One argument could be that it gives favored and/or paying efforts such as Citrea more business confidence. I don't believe that it is probably a good trade-off for the 'ethos' of freedom of choice, especially insofar as there is still a hope that Bitcoin gains some strength from the efforts of the non-commercial/enthusiast userbase.
From an elitist point of view, the herd probably can be guided in the 'wrong' direction, but I don't like the looks of mitigating this 'threat' for the comfort of the business world. Especially in service to players to prefer to pilfer value from Bitcoin on the cheap vs. peg out one-to-one as real sidechains do. (Yes, I see an argument that a cheapskate doing things in a less destructive way, and soaking up some demand at the consumer level, is preferable to some other options so it is not irrational to gently guide things in that direction. Lots of them are working on/with interesting technology with helps with Bitcoin's shortcomings after all.)
A big benefit of a spat such as this is to incentivize small-scale support (nodes and miners.) Certainly that seems to be happening where I'm at.
Ultimately I see the best defense against spammer-class miscreants (who don't get bored and wander off on their own) as giving the Bitcoin community some ability to fuck with them and degrade their performance expectations. If an element of capricious unknown complicates development, and especially discourages 'serious' commercial use by well capitalized entities, that isn't to me necessarily a bad thing (even though it would probably work against me financially.)
Good luck with things. I'll finally, after 15 years, get off my ass and build out some capability so I can help you or fight you as seems right at the time. After a 180-degree shift back in the early days, I've always favored massive transaction fees (at variance with most of the community) which is one of the reasons for my warming to your efforts.