what happened for Bitcoin Unlimited? Once ever, I buy BTU on bitfinex, but bitfinex seems like an unethical businessman, merciful, and shortly after, BTU is gone away
even if BTU were to become the future bitcoin and gain all the support you shouldn't have bought it! because it is not yet anything! you bought a virtual promise at best. and the only person making a profit is the exchange themselves who get the fees from you.
to OP, i disagree with saying there is an urgency for a scaling solution. the spam attack is the problem that is pretending there is an urgency.
I'm not sure whether blockchain will split or not but I think we're really need scaling solution to increase adopters and merchants to adopt and use bitcoin as an alternative currency which could be used all over the world (as long as there is internet connection) just like people use PayPal to purchase goods right now. The spam attack could be prevented by increase blocksize, so miners could process more transactions every 10 minutes.