It looks like btc will go closer to what Monero was am I right? The problem I see with that is Monero was limited in growth because of the mass bans probably because of KYC. If Bitcoin implements silent payments to increase privacy (Woo!) would this put us at risk of meeting the same fate as Monero? or are we too big?

You cannot do this securely because no open source project exists. There is software that will do it but it is closed source and I would recommend that you never compromise your security of your wallet without checking every line of code in software which directly communicates with your wallet.

I have been researching into creating my own lightening node and I have a little question relating to the mnemonic code and the channel backup. Why are both of these needed? With Bitcoin you only need to have the mnemonic code to recover your funds correct? Why does lightening need you to backup the channel as well?