Bip300 fixes this. Trustless side chains with no middlemen. Fees go to btc miners.
Liquid reminds me of an PoS. In fact worse than PoS. Liquid don't even stake. No cost for mining. Free money for middleman. Wow👏👏👏
https://help.blockstream.com/hc/en-us/articles/900001386846-How-do-transaction-fees-on-Liquid-work- 
Discussion
I don't understand Bip300 yet.
But I'm really curious if trustless trust is possible such as running my own nodes like LN.
Well there are people who claim miners are the custodians.
But I think that’s a lazy argument as miners are profit seekers.
If the don’t mine sidechain txs they lose out on business and will be outcompeted by a miner who does mine sidechain txs.
The idea of a chain makes me instinctively reject it. It's not just stubbornness, a blockchain which plebs can't run node is nonsense.
Of course, I don't know the right answer of Bitcoin scalability, but I do know the wrong answer.
Bitcoin is the currency on the sidechains. You call them later 2s if that sounds better.
But I personally I am biased as I would love to have end-2-end encrypted btc transactions via Monero type sidechain.