I don't get all this hand-wringing about hard forks.
Everyone is paranoid that their fork won't be popular (whether among end-users or miners).
They seem to forget that on a world scale, nobody gives a crap about bitcoin still. Whether your fork occupies 0.0004% or 0.00004% of the world money supply is a rather minor distinction.
Look at it another way, would it be that horrible if your fork of bitcoin was "only" as popular as bitcoin was in 2011? That didn't stop anyone in 2011. And your fork would be way easier to use than bitcoin was then.
Put yet another way, I'd rather bitcoin be "right" than "popular". Whichever fork is what I want, that's what I'm going to use. If I wanted a "popular" currency and payment system, the dollar and Visa would be obvious choices, but that's not what any of us want.
and therein lies the answer of which fork will be most popular and will win at the end of the day. hint: look at the polls.
in other words, devs can dev all they want but they won't if they aren't being funded.
You just did it again!
If popularity means winning, then we might as well all go home. I hate to break it to you, but bitcoin is terribly, terribly unpopular. At best, 0.01% of the world has used it.
The whole reason we're still here is that we want tools that work for us, and if the whole world decides to join us, great! If not, it'll go on just fine as a niche product.
I personally think bitcoin can be a much better-known niche product than it is today, but it will always be niche. And not just due to limitations on bandwidth. Consensus takes time. If you're willing to trust a 3rd party (no consensus needed!), they can run circles around bitcoin. They don't yet, but they could.
Bitcoin will become the pressure relief valve. If banks and governments don't give us a fair deal, we use bitcoin instead. Bitcoin will never be the default though, it will always be the censorship-resistance tool.