The Bitcoin Core Capacity Increases FAQ just came out.
Quite a few developers and others have signed it and there seems a concerted effort on the part of some to push it through. However, some of the main developers (including, among others Gavin, Hearn, Garzik, Emin Gün Sirer (Cornell professor and distributed systems expert) , and Dr Peter R. Rizun (co-managing editor at Ledger)) haven't signed on to it yet.
Where does it leave the rest of us? And is this a kind of plan that wallets, exchanges and payment processors will sign up to and get behind? (I hope not.)
IMHO it seems the best way forward is to plan a hard fork with the economic majority. Say, after block ## number we pledge to only make and accept BIP 101 blocks or Bitcoin unlimited blocks. If we fork with the economic majority miners will eventually sign up to the new fork and our hashing power will return and surpass our original hashing power. The economic majority can help field nodes and miners to provide security for the block until enough miners switch over.
Time is pretty much up. Discussion has gone on for over a year and Blockstream affiliated developers have finally made their plans crystal clear. Blocks area already filling up precariously. (Quite a few 900k blocks in the last few hours.)
If we want bitcoin to be used as a regular currency with apps such as purse.io, foldapp, and open bazaar, we all as a community will have to take action soon.
Some are suggesting Gavin close down the original github repository so that both the blockstream core and the unlimited or bip 101 core can start on an equal footing. Regardless if that happens or not, we'll have a couple rocky months ahead of us.
