Why are you calling experts the people who don't see the need to move the blocksize limit, which you agree is needful?
I call bitcoin core experts because they are experts that is not disputable much their competition are experts too. Scaling is a complex topic. There are strong disagreements about what is optimal. No one has made a definitive case but everyone agrees bitcoin needs to scale.
A politically driven contentious hard fork that seems to be much more about who gets to control the future of bitcoin rather then actually about increasing the block size is a known evil. Bitcoin is intrinsically just a computer ledger. It's value comes from the talent of those involved in its ecosystem. The goal is to grow that ecosystem not rip it apart.
OK I was worried that you thought that Core folks are the only experts out there.
Increasing the blocksize is fairly straightforward choice but there is a civil war about that. What will happen with possibly more contentious issues?
We need a governance mechanism for future debates because we can be sure there will be several others. And I prefer a governance mechaism who is bottum up -hard fork and let the ecosystem choose - than one who is top down and doesn't support competion (extremely fragile position).
We don't rip apart the ecosystem by hard forking, not more than the creation of an altcoin rips apart the ecosystem. Remember when the first alcoin was created there were debates about whether that should be avoided for the good of Bitcoin. The endgame of a hard fork is the same : there will be yet another altcoin. And the network effect of the winning chain will keep sucking every human and capital resources which want to be part of this revolution.
Again this comes back to what makes bitcoin valuable. Bitcoin is valuable because it is a transparent trustless distributed consensus system that allows exchange to occur free from centralized choke points and government debasement of the unit of exchange. A bitcoin is only as valuable as the network of people participating and accepting it as a medium of exchange.
A contentious hard fork is incredibly destructive because it tells the minority that their opinions and interest do not manner. It is a use of force over persuasion. The proper way to fork bitcoin is to build an overwhelmingly large supermajority demonstrate a clear need for the change and then fork as slowly and as possible with a significant lead time to bring as many as possible with you. Every individual who leaves bitcoin or forks off into an alternative is lost value for the ecosystem.
This scaling debate appears to be more about who gets to control future forks and changes then it is about increasing the block size. The answer to that should be simple. Whomever can build true voluntary consensus should prevail and attempts to browbeat the opposition into submission should be opposed.
The Chinese miners with their 90% hash rate support requirement for a hard fork have the right idea. Even with 90% such a fork should be rolled out a slowly as possible with maximum possible outreach to the remaining 10%.
