But the market seems generally opposed to a hard fork---that's the overall sentiment on social media, the forum, slacks and mailing lists....backed by nodes and miners.
The only way the "market" can truly express itself right now is by moving away from Bitcoin, that is exactly what is happening right now, Bitcoin is losing market share. Splitting the blockchain actually gives the market a much clearer choice, when that happens we will see where the value will flow.
So what happened to that Bitcoin fork that was slated to activate in April? Much excitement on bitco.in if I recall. Funny, no one seems to be talking about it.
Why don't you fork? Is it because that fork failed, and now you must try to lobby miners to leverage their hash power to force a split?
Perhaps it's more important to note that the market can't change the rules of the Bitcoin network---it can only switch to a new network with new tokens. In the process, you'll probably split the community into multiple blockchains.
The market can change the rules of the Bitcoin network, that is one of its fundamental and most important principles, I have already explained why I think that is the case in this thread.
The market can't change the rules of the network. This is a matter of fact. The market
could migrate to a different network with different rules. Could you point me to the protocol documentation that suggests changing the consensus rules is "one of its fundamental and most important principles?" Perhaps something from the whitepaper? The whitepaper only talks about the possible need to enforce new rules (and incentives) if needed. That suggests soft forks, not consensus break.
A lot of people (like me) oppose hard forks on principle in the context of a consensus ledger. You're not going to convince us.
We do not need to convince you, you can not stop the hard fork from happening regardless of what you think. You are correct in saying that because of people like you a hard fork by a non Core client would guarantee that the chain will split, I entirely agree, and since nobody can stop a minority from initiating a hard fork the split has become inevitable.
Nobody is trying to stop you. Why are you trying to convince people? If the market is interested, you can fork and the network will follow.
but you will split the network and people like me will make sure you won't have a clean hard fork.
Which is exactly why I think a split has become inevitable, I can respect your position, how come you can not respect mine? We can just go our separate ways, in peace and tolerance.
I have said repeatedly that you should just fork. You were quoting my response to someone else.
There is nothing you can do to stop the split from happening except for compromise. You keep asking how come we have waited this long to initiate the hard fork? It is out of courtesy and respect, and it is in the hope that we can find compromise and agreement so that we can move forward together as one, splitting the chain is a measure of last resort. But it has come to this, we have radically different ideologies on what we think Bitcoin is and what it should become. Therefore it does make sense for these different groups of people to go their separate ways.
Yes, just fork already. I'm tired of hearing about it---you're not going to convince the people who have not budged for the last year. Splitting the network could have disastrous consequences for users and custodians, but the blood will be on the hands of those that initiated the split.