We were made a variety of conflicting 'promises' by a variety of people.  Chief among these 'decentralization'.  Various less informed people probably honestly promulgated the myth that it would be a nearly free exchange medium for the masses.

I don't know about you, but I immediately spotted the scaling issues and tradeoffs that would need to be made.  I knew that some promises would be broken simply by applying a little bit of logic.

I hope that the promise which is broken is the notion that Bitcoin is to become the native layer upon which all human economic interaction is carried.  Although I think it would be ultra-cool, it will absolutely destroy other aspects of the solution that are more important to me.  Even getting 0.001% to that lofty goal would kill Bitcoin in the ways that I feel give it it's true strength.

So, why even make baby steps toward something which is not tenable?  The ONLY thing which can be accomplished is to ruin what is otherwise a solution with huge potential.

We need layers which allow Bitcoin to reach it's ultimate potential as a truly revolutionary development.  I can think of nothing more approprate for this than sidechains.

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I actually love the idea of 'treechains', but that is simply not tenable as a core at this point.  Hopefully they can be proven on a sidechain.  Really one of the most legitimate arguments against 'sidechains' is that they could foster developments which make the Bitcoin core seem so inadequate that there is a strong incentive to simply deprecate it.  I'm not all that concerned that this will happen, and if it did it is likely that value would be imported from Bitcoin anyway due to it's valuations created by it's strong network effect.