But, as it stands now, even 8MB blocks might be risky at the moment
Just noticed the disconnect between your message and your username.
I appreciate your attention to details for I value that just as well.
My username suggests the next bandwidth target for the idea of a static limit on block size, but doesn't hint at the time when the adjustment needs to be made. I argued against many other more sophisticated scalability proposals with mathematical rigor, but it was when I found myself defending the future limit against the current one, that I realized the obvious contradiction in my line of thinking.
Finding the appropriate moment in time for the transition would become the most challenging and interesting part of Bitcoin's evolutionary path.
8mb block outta thin future extrapolations is as dumb as any other blocksize BIP proposal.
Besides, scaling is not a matter of blocksize so how about people let it go?
If it resolved a sudden spike in Bitcoin userbase (i.e. larger than x8), something like "8 and 8 only" wouldn't be such a terrible compromise to me, but I'd far prefer the beginning of at least some of the non-blocksize scaling solutions before any sudden aberrations in the transaction rate ever happen. Hope it transpires that way, a userbase spike right here in October 2015 would just reignite this timewasting nonsense all over again.