Because a year ago, the average was about half of what it is today and therefore we will be out of space in a other year, never mind spikes, never mind unforeseen factors, never mind the time it takes to get consensus and do a rollout.
Okay. The average block size is still less than half of the limit. So why couldn't Gavin and Mike continue to work within the core community again?
Because of precisely what I said in the OP. Greg wants us to literally run out space before doing anything. He and the other core devs don't want to act.
And Gavin doesn't agree. Nor does Mike, Jeff, a handful of major companies, and an increasing majority of miners.
I am 90% certain XT will end up being just another altcoin. Have fun supporting it. Hey, I like a lot of altcoins. Nothing wrong with that. But pretending it will replace bitcoin anytime in the next 3 years is fanciful thinking. I've never held an alt where I thought that would be the case. Gavin should have at least had the courtesy to come up with his own name instead of riding bitcoin's coat tails.
Well I'm 90% sure you're wrong and misinformed.
You are misinformed.
XT is an alt client that supports the Bitcoin blockchain and its rules and protocol.
The only difference is it will support bigger blocks IF AND WHEN 75% of the miners agree.
if and when that happens, core will either upgrade to be compatible or Bitcoin
will fork, but since the economic SUPER MAJORITY will be supporting bigger
blocks, the 1mb version of Bitcoin will likely be considered the alt.
Just because one code repository calls itself core doesn't give it exclusive rights
to control Bitcoin or call itself Bitcoin. That's what people have been pointing out
for years when Bitcoin pessimists tried to argue that 'Bitcoin isn't decentralized
because it's run by a few core devs.'. Well, now we are seeing that indeed, it
is decentralized. The core devs don't call all the shots and if they try to do
something the community doesn't like (such as take too long to increase
the blocksize), they will lose their power.
If one understands all this yet still insists on calling it an "altcoin", then
it is an attempt to mischaracterize and marginalize it, and an attempt
to influence opinion through misinformation (thus it is intellectually dishonest.)
It is also an attempt to force an outcome based on one's personal opinions
and biases, rather than allowing the economic majority to decide.