that fork was an emergency update, where there was no controversy over the implementation.
here, we have multiple competing development teams that disagree (including actively lobbying miners against one another), and the stated threat of moving forward with or without miner (and surely node) consensus. that can easily mean chain forking into multiple ledgers ...forever.
if the network can't reach consensus on the rules to enforce, the only means to establish a single (trustless, decentralized) ledger are broken. that will erode a lot of trust in bitcoin, possibly beyond repair.
XT, Classic and Unlimited are compatible with 2MB. If Core goes 2MB how is it contentious?
that's a big if, for now. so...contention.
gavin withdrew the BIP101 pull request from the Core BIPs on github, but isn't XT
still implementing BIP101, which is 8MB block size limit to start? that means miners can produce blocks as large as 8MB.
8MB blocks are not compatible with Classic's 2MB block size limit.
further, since Unlimited has no hard-coded block-size limit, it views all blocks as valid (whether max 1MB, 2MB or 8MB). that means that it accepts Core, Classic and XT blocks. but Classic and Core won't accept blocks above 2MB, meaning if any such blocks exist, compatibility with both XT and Unlimited is broken.
none of these are compatible with a 1MB limit, of course.
this represents a possibility for at least three separate forks. A 1MB fork, which rejects Classic and XT blocks above 1MB. A 2MB fork, which rejects XT blocks above 2MB. And an 8MB fork, which accepts Core, Classic and XT blocks.
We can wait for Bitcoin to become very hard to use when people constantly sends more transactions than can even be included in blockchain, also know as denial of service attack, but this will erode a lot of trust in Bitcoin as well, very likely beyond repair. So not much safer choice eighter - unless you believe people will be happy to use Bitcoin with 1) huge fees, 2) long 1st confirmation times 3) never confimed transactions. I dont know of any coin with restricted blocksizes so people can hardly use it, yet very popular and people eager to use this coin
any evidence for this "sky is falling" attitude? any evidence of huge fees? what is "huge?" i've always been able to get my transaction in the next block for minimal fees.
bitcoin has "restricted blocksizes" yet, it is "very popular and people [are] eager to use this coin."
