Are the 2 way peg frozen transactions staggered in the middle of the 2 chains (kind of like an equivalent of transaction locking) perhaps without the speed of the masternodes?
It takes 3-4 days for a main-side chain transaction to complete - i.e. for enough proof of work etc to be done on both sides to secure the transfer.
However, once the sidechain has developed sufficient liquidity, another transaction called "Atomic swaps" can be supported where basically the system facilitates an exchange between 2 parties who park their equivalent holdings and have them swapped by the system. That's probably how most of the exchange would be done and possibly only takes a few minutes.
This isn't micro transaction stuff. This kind of plumbing infrastructure is intended for heavyweight movements I imagine. Lets say you want to move $2 billion dollars anonymously. Your not worried about a few minutes - or even a few days - here or there. You're worried about security.
How is it possible to solve either the scaling problem or slow block times with this kind of method, what am I missing ?
Bitcoin will solve the scaling problem with payment channels. There comes a point where something gets big enough for economies of scale to justify entirely independent infrastructures layered on top of the blockchain. You would not want to use blockchains for day to day transactions anyway - in a mature financial infrastructure it isn't required for anything other than to record permanence.
It's becoming clearer that bitcoin is establishing itself and will become unassailable (at least, it looks like that to me). There's just far too much adoption, network effect, engineering effort and venture capital being poured into it for it to be knocked off the pedestal now. A bit like Microsoft in the 1980s when they took over DOS. It didn't matter what competitive innovation appeared, they always managed to do just enough to fend it off - even if it was just a boiler plated Windows 3.0 against the Mac's infinitely superior System 7.
At the same time, the advent of new technologies like sidechains is finally an admission that the bitcoin technology (as opposed to the bitcoin store of value) can't support all thats required of a future financial system based on cryptocurrency.
The real question for us therefore is what's the role of altcoins going to be ? Will the crypto-economy want genuinely independent blockchains which interface with bitcoin-reserve through freely floating, unpegged markets or will it consolidate only around alts which are in some way pegged - either mechanically or otherwise.
Right now, Dash is at one third of one percent of Bitcoin's marketcap - peanuts. If the former is the case, then that can surely only grow. If the latter is the case then there may not be much hope for any altcoin of any type other than a pure hedge.
My own view is that if bitcoin explodes, the top 10 alts (at least) will receive a massive boost - even if only as a hedge against catastrophic issues appearing in Bitcoin / sidechain / treechain networks. Dash is superbly placed in this respect because not only does it have a unique approach to anonymity, it also has an absolutely distinct and powerful technology that continues to deliver new solutions to core cryptocurrency issues in the form of the masternode network. Whatever anyone says, it is delivering on all the original design goals.
Adoption is everything. If you can get a bit of adoption, you're less exposed to speculative volatility. Speculative value can only last so long anyway - can't it. Again, Dash has a big potential advantage here because it has more adoptability "out of the box" than bitcoin does, with its native anonymity and fast confirmation properties. This needs to be levered as much as possible to get some market penetration IMO.