As any community grows, interests and needs can diverge, even where there remains a shared core belief. For that reason we have seen the Ver split, the gold split and there may be others down the line.
While it is not always possible, I am wondering whether we might be able to achieve consensus in the best way possible: to give everyone everything.
I will qualify my remarks by noting that I am a lover (of bitcoin) not a coder.
My thought process started as I was using segwit and noting the network's ability to have legacy and segwit operate with different address formats and different confirmation processes but confirming to the same mother bitcoin system (so there is only one ledger/one currency). That essentially gives users a choice to confirm with legacy bitcoin confirmation or segwit I believe. You can make that choice based on the address format that you use.
I understand that the lightning network and other confirmation processes may also come in which will offer further options.
My proposal is that we consider offering more sidechain options: ie: a scaled up mined version (s2x itself perhaps), and perhaps even a gpu mined version. Choice and freedom of choice are some of the things that I love most about bitcoin and expanding that would, I think, be fantastic for everyone in the community. It would or should also address the discontent of the split people and allow them to reintegrate.
There would be no risk to those who fear miner centralization since they could just use legacy confirmations or segwit etc (since the scaled up mined format would be a side chain even those running a node would not have to upgrade their hardware). Everyone could use the confirmation process that best suited their needs, interests and opinions for any particular transaction.
While a number of side-chains confirming to one bitcoin network could be difficult to learn for some, it would likely create competition with each confirmation protocol competing for transactions, which would be a boon for users. Most users would probably just use one confirmation protocol (or perhaps one for most transactions but another for more sensitive ones), but others would be available to them and everyone else as well.
If I were a coder I might understand all of this better and if I did I would submit a bip. I don't and so all that I can do is throw this out there as an idea.
Please understand that this comes from the warm place in my heart that I have for this technology and this community. I hope that it will not trigger 500 replies attacking me.
[This has been posted to reddit at https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7ezeai/the_sidechain_shuffle_give_everyone_what_they_want/