8Mb option is at 26%,
while BIP100 is at 7%
BIP101 at less than 1%

I wonder if 8Mb belongs to any BIP or is just one-time fork without any baked-in increase schedule?
That would seem to be the most responsible, yet future proof solution to date.

Yeah, there is a threshold for the number of developers in a team for it to be efficient. More complex projects would then require sub-components with corresponding sub-teams working on them and the group of architects would then design and coordinate the development. I don't know if Bitcoin has already reached this level of complexity or that it ever should. I mean the basic principles that it's built on are not that complex, maybe it's better to keep it simple.

If we believe in consensus, instead of turning Bitcoin into a mindless machine, then we should be able to reach it consistently when the need arises.
Doing it every 4 years seems like a reasonable exercise, so that we remember how to stay vigilant. That's why I advocate one-off fork with 8Mb hard cap.

Two things.

First, more developers doesn't always result in faster development or higher quality code, because building a good team is not a simple task. There is an old saying: "if you make 9 women pregnant, you won't get baby in a month". This applies to engineering in general (and software development in particular) very well.

Second, working for money and working for an idea are two different things. The former can be influenced, (mis-)directed and manipulated, the latter cannot. If you don't believe in what you are doing and don't get paid, there is no reason to continue. If you do continue, though, then you know what you're doing.

The idea of a jump (from 1 to 8 in this case) is to allow for temporary peaks in transaction volume.
The hard limit can only be raised in a hard fork and we don't want to fork every year or now and then.
The hard limit must be such that the network should feel uneasy operating at full capacity, but still workable.

In fact I'm more inclined to think that forking every 4 years as "Bitcoin halving celebration" is actually a good idea.
So my proposed solution would to be increase the hard limit to 8Mb (with soft limit of 4Mb for initial ramp up) and then re-evaluate every 4 years.

There wasn't a need for 1Mb limit 4 years ago either, we could have done away with 256Kb or 512Kb just fine. In fact, up until recently the hard 1Mb cap wasn't effective at all as it never was approached. But smaller soft limits were all hit and raised. That's how Bitcoin survived.

As this time we are discussing rising the hard limit (via hard fork) we need to future proof it a little bit. In this light, 8Mb seems reasonable as a new hard limit for the next 4 years, in conjunction with smaller soft limits that miners can agree to maintain internally to prevent network spamming and abuse. They can, for example, agree to not build on top of anything larger than 4Mb initially, however full nodes will still accept and propagate blocks all the way up to 8Mb. This way the infrastructure will be ready for soft expansion in the future.

Whether to expand beyond 8Mb, when and how is questionable and depends on many factors. Maybe a series of hard-forks down the road will be a more appropriate and responsible solution than trying to predict the technology, but anything less than 8Mb for the upcoming years might start hurting Bitcoin and deflect its user base towards other solutions. We, as a community, definitely don't want that.

8Mb is what Bitcoin needs in order to have only twice the capacity of its closest PoW competitor. However a soft cap of 4Mb might be a good safety measure for the initial ramp up schedule. Whether doubling should occur every two or every four years and what an ultimate cap (if any) should be is all debatable.

A few more thoughts on the matter...

Firstly, the stable and tested core has been proven to increase its soft limit from 250Kb, to 500Kb, to then 750Kb in order to survive this long by being a useful transactional medium with a single ledger. Artificially capping it to 1Mb now cannot be claimed as a safe solution going forward, because we are entering an uncharted territory here. Again a proven and workable solution that we currently have and value is known to have been increasing the cap, not maintaining it.

Secondly, the market for fees will emerge naturally as the network can timestamp a limited amount of transactions not because of an artificial cap, but due to physical limitations related to block propagation times and network stability. Whether we need an explicit limit baked into the protocol or allow the network to find its own equilibrium (with a help of outside competition in altcoin space) is a question open to debate. A series of planned workshops should help find a common ground with regards to this.

Thirdly, the idea of every monetary transaction on a single ledger might sound Utopian with present day technology and limitations, however, it is not entirely out of question. I, personally, don't think that every coffee purchase will be on blockchain within next 5 to 10 years, but it doesn't mean that we have to artificially cap the blockchain beyond what current technology allows. What transactions are in and what out will be decided by the market.

That I agree with.

In order for more complex use cases like contracts to be usable, physical security of private keys along with personal awareness and responsibility will be a must. Presently, losing control to a private key will result in the loss of funds associated with it. With contracts, however, it might be used to sign to things which can have more lasting effects. I wonder how digital contracts will be enforced and how to prevent abuse in cases of lost keys. Something like multisig with a third party within a web of trust will be necessary for anything other than monetary transactions.

The danger of it, on the other hand, is somewhat akin locking your gold and getting nice pieces of paper in return.
That German gold is still locked there somewhere, maybe...

I guess we should have both.

A system with larger blocks and a system with sidechains.
If we relax the insistence on only one having to carry the name Bitcoin, then we might end up in a very interesting battle of ideas.

Since both approaches require forking, I suggest we add a suffix to each fork.
Something like Bitcoin XT and Bitcoin SC.

Of course, it would be much cleaner if those two were implemented in separate chains to begin with, but reality is always a bit more complex than we want it to be.

The fact that most of the core devs are now employed by a single entity is somewhat alarming, but they need to eat too and then we might finally have our Bitcoin CEO.

I might have.
I thought Namecoin (and merged mining in general) would be a good example of those other uses,
but unlike sidechains it doesn't have to take bitcoins out of circulation in order to use.


Something like land tracking via blockchain will be interesting, but money itself should be simple and kept separate.

Bitcoin, as it currently stands (one currency, one chain), taps into the balance of power that exists on the planet. It means, that big players need to compete for domination in the system, keeping themselves in check and the network robust. If Bitcoin is split into sidechains, then every large geopolitical region will likely get one, which is far easier for local governments to control.

If that manifests, we will have arrived at the monetary configuration similar to that of present day fiat and therefore have achieved nothing. The block size needs to grow for as long as the network remains stable (propagation times considered). This might result in a slight shift of power from regions with a lot of hashing capacity to those with higher bandwidth, but that would only highlight the weaknesses those regions have in the era of technological advancements and help them become more competitive on the global landscape.

Although I'm not an expert in this, the technology has likely improved since 80's - 90's when it was first deployed. However, if supersonic claim is true, I wouldn't expect any official information about it to be freely available in the open.

Russia has changed a lot in a recent decade and will continue to do so, sanctions might actually accelerate some inner developments that are long overdue.

Probably has something to do with supercavitation effect used in USSR's Shkval torpedoes or improved variants thereof.

You will have much greater insight into Universe's mathematical design if you can read this:

http://kniganews.org/2014/01/02/orients/
http://kniganews.org/download/

PS: google translate might be of help

Вчера смотрел РБК и вот сюрприз - первый репортаж про Биткоин!

Сегодня уже на ютюбе ролик выложили: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOUtF8IMPX8

Думаю что миллионы россиян из деловой среды вчера услышали про Биткоин впервые. 

4YveTDV6pWv4vpz9w8JLVcdjzzywWU6fpH

I have spent 4 hours online and made 5 posts in Russian sub-forum.
I would like to be able to post in regular forum now.

Thanks!

Спасибо за ссылки, значит и у нас уже лёд тронулся.
Видео на ютюбе от 21 марта этого года, совсем недавно, может и до финансовых каналов тоже потихоньку дойдет.