I strongly disagree with that. Gold fails because you can't take immediate, frictionless, settlement across any border. It fails because it's extremely difficult to audit efficiently and remotely. It fails because it requires a trusted agent to manage the ledger between it and the paper that rides on top of it (the paper that makes the units divisible and transportable). You obviously know all of this. Why do you think it becomes centralized and controlled by central bankers because of coffee transactions (which I can conduct in a noncustodial way right now)? I'm confused.
Discussion
yes
Pros:
+ gives miners more revenue
+ allows people to experiment with other functionality using their bitcoin
Cons:
… unclear
How does this negatively impact the base chain?
I don't know, I think you're missing my point, which is: who will be able to do these Bitcoin transactions when hyperbitcoinization happens? You seem to be happy if some big corporations can use Bitcoin and pay the high fees it will require, while the common man will have to resort to custodial Lightning wallets or something like that. Is that it?
I think the more you enable people to hold and use coins directly on a decentralized system (you can argue Drivechain has a different trust model than Bitcoin, but you can't argue it isn't decentralized and censorship-resistant) the easier the system is to capture.
If there are only 10 giant companies using Bitcoin or decentralized sidechains directly in the world that is capturable by the State in a minute, but if there are 100 million direct users that becomes quite impossible. I don't know what is your threshold in this line and what you think Bitcoin without any changes will be capable of achieving.