whats disheartening is seeing how poeple are so afraid of the tiniest changes, bitcoin development grinds to a halt.
Even if people make a hard fork to 1.5MB, it wouldn't be tiniest of changes.
Stopping mining pools to run a new daemon is easy and all, but the problem is that the world wouldn't update all at once, and the whole Bitcoin "ecosystem" would have a temporary problem with the "2 blockchains".
I think they can all update at once, like BitcoinXT planned to do, everyone run the new software which runs old code until some high percentage of blocks are hashing with the new version. and one time there was an emergency hard fork without any of this fancy way of updating everyone all at once and it took a few hours for the new chain to catch up.
i'd argue that not changing the 1MB is a change in itself, we were promised this limit would move up as needed. satoshi knew what that would do, and he talked about SPV clients becoming more important as time went on. not changing the limit is changing the game plan in a big way.
"i'd argue that not changing the 1MB is a change in itself" <--- I like this point. I would add that not changing is not the same and shouldn't be evaluated as a proxy for something else that isn't yet invented or otherwise ready-to-go as an alternative (ex: sidechains or LN). From what I can understand, sidechains and LN will be groundbreaking/important regardless of blocksize. I get the feeling that a lot of folks see sidechains/ln as mutually exclusive w/ XT or any other blocksize increase BIP.
Related question: If you have time
, what are the best two or three arguments against raising blocksize in your (or anybody else's) opinion, notwithstanding whether you agree with them? My background is not tech, and I'm positive I'm in the same boat w/ tons of folks, so some short bullet points would be helpful for us non-techies. From what I can tell, the best arguments against increasing blocksize are things like: 1) security (decreased node count), 2) unreasonable economic barriers (objections based on specific BIPs (Blacklisting argument against XT) seem less concerning b/c they're fixable and negotiable). Are there obvious solutions to the strongest arguments (whatever those are to you) that resolve the concern and still increase blocksize?
heres a good link
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/36085/what-are-the-arguments-for-and-against-the-increase-of-the-block-size-limiti'll comment on them.
Arguments against increasingBandwidth requirements are too much for full nodesthis is #1 argument, and is true when you talk about blocksize >8MB's without any optimizations to limit bandwidth usage for full node. I agree to delay any significant increase until optimizations implemented.
Bigger blocks will destroy the market for transaction feeshas been mostly discredited.
Bitcoin is not meant for every person on the planet to pay for their every cup of coffeePretty sure this idea ( bitcoin is GOLD not money ) isnt what the white paper says, and is merely an excuse to not scale bitcoin.
Consensus may not be achievable, bitcoin may split down the middleweather devs push for 1MB to stay forever, or increase the block limit, this statement holds true. at this point there is a gr8er chance of splitting bitcoin if the answer is 1MB stays forever.
Bitcoin is destroying viability of altcoinsAn increased Bitcoin blocksize would decrease demand for other blockchains, hurting investors of altcoins.
this one's just retarded.
Arguments for increasingThe transaction capacity is too low to support a global payment networkGreater blocksize will increase total transaction feesEffective blocksize will not increase over nightConsensus will be achieved before the hardfork is initiatedTechnical issues will be fixedSlower block propagation due to bigger blocks will be mitigated by Header-first synchronization, etc.