ok, so if i understand your answer, relative market price btwn a BTC and a scBTC will aid in the assessment of whether a SC is succeeding or not? for example, if the price of scBTC is rising and leading the price of BTC, that might be an indicator that the innovation related to the SC is valid?
second question, would transfer of a "significant number" of BTC to scBTC mean anything to you?
Correct, stability in their correlation could be one indication of a well designed and useful application.
As for your second question, I'm sorry but this is too early to answer considering I have no practical example to consider.
Of course, I would be extremely careful in considering the transfer of a significant amount of BTC to scBTC to as I have stated above this is the same approach I would take with an altcoin.
If the particular sidechain gains traction, offers a particularly interesting use case and has properly implemented code that is vetted by the community, is safe and protected from any malicious intent then if need be I could eventually feel safe doing so.
Like all things BTC, it is a matter of trust.
and you may not have the luxury of a practical example.
for instance, one of the first SC's i'd expect to pop up is a SC with perfect anonymity added as an innovation to a simple fork of Bitcoin with no initial coins and a 1:1 peg in place to accept incoming transfers of BTC to scBTC.
the question for you is, what if you saw significant #'s of BTC start moving into scBTC, what would you conclude?