There are few trade-offs in the design of blockchains but a big one exists around consensus. Essentially, aspects such as cost, security, decentralization, capital efficiency, and throughput of the chain are all tied in different ways. I think we're still far from the efficient frontier, but at some point it becomes a matter of preference and not mere engineering. I think the strength of these networks is in being censorship resistant, decentralized platforms. There's no point in trying to compete on AWS's turf for decentralized computing for instance. So overall, I'd favor prioritizing security and decentralization over throughput, if and when the dilemma arises. Layer 2 solutions are a fine way of dealing with throughput hungry applications.

I don't know of any plans of the sort, nor is it clear how they would work. I do know some people have been successful in recovering their passwords using tools like "John the Ripper".

Proposals are not just ideas, they must be pieces of code that patch the existing protocol. Once if they are adopted, the protocol gets recompiled on the fly and the chain carries on with the new code base.

Sorry, as a policy I don't comment on litigation.

Mu.

I think one of the largest barrier to entry for anyone in this space is the complexity of securing private keys. Getting the right UX around that seems fundamental.

I love the Starkware team and I think STARKs are going to be a key building block for scalability and privacy. There are many entities involved around Tezos but, to my knowledge, there aren't any concrete plans yet for collaboration. One of the beautiful part of Tezos is that there needs not be an explicit plan since anyone can submit improvements to the protocol.

Please ask only one question per question. I don't know about a platform like this, I know some people in the community were discussing using Kialo which seems cool. The governance model is designed to be a simple bootstrap procedure, there are many ways it can be refined.

You need interoperability in a world where you have a lot of heterogeneous chains that need to talk to each other. But why do you have so many chains to begin with? Why isn't one absorbing the user base of the other ones? The cyclical viewpoint is that pushing for interoperability is a bid for dominance disguised as a blue ocean strategy. I like the Polkadot project and the Cosmos project a great deal, but I'll note that Polkadot isn't developing its project as a Cosmos zone, and that the Cosmos project isn't putting it's atoms on a para-chain.

Taste and perennity, but the latter only becomes evident over time.