As Bitcoin has grown, so have the blocks. Reasonable traffic projections indicate that as Bitcoin spreads via word of mouth, we will reach the limit of the current system some time next year, or by 2017 at the absolute latest. And another bubble or press cycle could push us over the limit before even that. The result might not be pretty.
So it is now time to raise the limit, or remove it entirely. That was always the plan. This is where the problem starts: those who don’t want to see Bitcoin scale up as Satoshi intended have decided to stall the process of doing so. They see a golden, one-time opportunity to forcibly divert Bitcoin from its intended path and onto a wildly different technical trajectory. They don’t know exactly what the alternative design will be, and certainly haven’t built it — but that doesn’t matter. They think that by blocking the blockchain’s growth they can “incentivise” (i.e. force) the Bitcoin community to switch to something different, something more in line with their personal technical tastes.
