Bitcoin Forum

Theymos has stated he is against contentious hardforks and won't support anything without "consensus".
When asked, he defined consensus as "no significant disagreements".

However, I think that is just not possible when it comes to Bitcoin's scalability.
There has been continuous and passionate disagreement for years now.

Thoughts?

Not easy at the moment. Since bitcion has no such kind mechanism for voting in its protocole like in another altcoins. Different miners can only express their opinions in public place. This is really serious issues. It will split our bitcoin community.

Not based on theymos's definition (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1161315.msg12243511#msg12243511) of consensus. There is too large of a number of individuals who can veto any given proposal.

Additionally, a large number of the individuals with veto power (under theymos's definition) are on blockstream's payroll, who have a strong economic incentive to not allow the maximum block size to increase.

Both of the above means that in order for the max block size to be increased, there will most likely need to be an economic consensus. XT had probably had close to an economic consensus, however many bitcoin related companies that publicly supported XT were DDoS'ed, intimidating others from voicing their support, and mining pools who even allowed miners to show their support for XT were similarly DDoS'ed, making it difficult for anyone to show their support of XT. (also remember when someone sold 20,000BTC on bitfinex within minutes/hours after the first block was found that "voted" for XT).

Bitcoin Classic has a similar amount of support among major economic bitcoin related companies, and the majority of mining pools have shown their support (based on hashrate). I would say that Bitcoin Classic (or one of it's successors) has a fairly decent chance of being implemented. I would also say that Hern's exit will wake up a decent number of people who will understand the need to have the maximum block size increased.

I think there will be "no significant disagreements" when it is very evident it must be raised.
One day, the time will come and we must raise to avert a obvious visible danger/disaster.

Currently, a blocksize increase doesn't seem necessary for a preventative protocol measure for future use/anticipation.
If this is true, it is possible we won't see evidence of consensus for a raise till around 2018-2020, IMO.

The question is, do we continue to wait till necessary or do we act now in anticipation?

Only time will tell.