Very similar yes. Monero is the third largest crypto project aside from Bitcoin/Ethereum. Strong FOSS ethos and widely respected and used by many Bitcoiners. Not in the same way. Monero requires consensus in the sense that the devs can't force anyone to run their software (it's voluntary to use or not after all). If the community at large doesn't like what they are doing at some point it will fork off. This is how Monero was created in the first place. Community didn't like the direction previous devs were taking the project so Monero was created. You can also swap away your Monero for something else and no one can stop you from doing that. Yes, Monero does have hardforks mostly for privacy improvements. Don't mean to get in the weeds, but although Bitcoin doesn't hardfork, in practice most have to follow new versions anyway and there is little diversity since 99% nodes run Bitcoin Core. For example, Bitcoin Core doesn't patch CVEs in older versions. No need to go all in on Monero though if you don't trust it yet. You can still be mostly Bitcoin and just have a small amount of Monero you use to spend on stuff.