Sidechain scaling and merge mining has been around since satoshi was writing on bitcoin talk.

Namecoin in 2011, Blockstream sidechain white paper in 2014 by Graham Maxwell, Paul Sztorc Bip300 idea in 2015, Sergio Lerner Rootstock white paper in 2016.

Then everyone started fighting of blocksize in 2017 and moved toward lightning as the panacea scaling solution.

It’s now 2023 and it’s clear lightning has been an uphill battle. They only way to make it user friendly is via custodians and have third party LSPs providing liquidity.

So it makes sense to look for alternative ideas rather than be myopic.