Quote from: nioc on February 13, 2016, 01:54:01 AM

Difficulty:   144,116,447,847
Next:   178,425,017,594
Hash Rate:   1,236,498,466 GH/s

Estimated Next Difficulty: 178,784,614,714 (+24.06%)
This is a clear sign of going up... miners investing more and burning more electricity in anticipation for bull run.

Quote from: Cconvert2G36 on February 13, 2016, 01:58:24 AM

To me, this disagreement boils down to the method on which transactions are priced. One side views something as a decentralization retention dial, the other sees the same dial as an economic policy tool not unlike central economic planning. We disagree on that, and we'll see how it shakes out.

We don't necessarily have to choose between either. Perhaps competing payment channels could have different economic policies where some allowed higher txs by having a longer CLTV period before settlement, some could have stricter spam control, and others less volume with shorter settlement times.

Dipping in a fee market event if it proves harmful won't be disastrous as there are always temporary off the chain solutions to buffer the extra tx's (Ironically, those that support Classic), and it will merely sway miners and many other to support increasing the blocksize quickly. If a fee market event proves to remove a lot of spam and create innovative other solutions like payment channels, we also all win. Basically we are discussing champagne problems that can be dealt with as we learn. The worst outcome is if a fee market isn't realized because tx volume stagnates.