look at Adam Back and Austin Hill. Adam invented the concept of POW yet he admittedly didn't get Bitcoin and never got in. now he's trying to use his influence to make up for it with sidechains which by all initial indications requires a change to the main protocol. they claim it doesn't but I'll bet there's at least some ugly hack required that allows it to function. we'll see.
anyone who has a stake in Bitcoin has to be suspicious of anyone who has a low to no stake wanting to change the protocol especially when they're operating a for profit company with core devs (gmax and Luke) who aren't drawing a paycheck yet from Bitcoin.
The best case scenario is that sidechains needs a few new opcodes to function, and the sidechains concept is just a decoy to get those opcodes into the protocol, and those opcodes turn out to be highly desirable for creating enhancing the privacy/fungibility of Bitcoin. The good kind of Trojan Horse.
On the other hand, those opcodes could be a the bad kind of Trojan Horse too.
how badly can fuck ups in the scripting language (new OP codes) screw up functionality in the main protocol? i've heard that one or more of the recent new OP codes required an "ugly hack" to the main protocol to allow them to function properly?