SC won't solve Bitcoin's scalability because they will optimize spamming Bitcoin for metadata. We'll be right back to the block size argument again. In fact, they will make it happen much faster.
Oh. I completely agree! My sentence earlier was poorly worded, I meant that scaling is important (whether or not SC happens).
EDIT: I see from the graph in a subsequent post that my intuition was correct. It isn't entirely up to date but shows alts at 4%. It's really quite silly for that to motivate anything at all about Bitcoin development. For sidechains to be a good idea they had better be a good idea independent of alts
Yes, the graph is interesting, but for a month, at least, it has been hovering near 90%, where it still stands (4832M / 5342M).
http://coinmarketcap.com/#USDAssuming the same underlying data is used by both sources.
Note: if Bitshares, Counterparty and Mastercoin are included in Bitcoin, then it is 91%