The Barry Silbert segwit2x agreement with >80% miner support.

[dinofelis]

You are essentially redefining "decentralization" as a system where the actors cannot communicate signal their interests or cooperate in any manner. This is not what decentralization is.

Of course it is.  Because if you give up on non-cooperation, you will automatically get hierarchical structures.
Apply your idea to the free market.  Consider in a free market that it would be a system where many actors can come together to make price agreements.  Even if they do this openly (like OPEC in the oil market did).  Do you consider that still as a free market, if there is a cartel that imposes its price on the rest ?  In my book, a free market is only free if the actors that are supposed to be in competition (sellers for instance) don't collude, that is, don't make agreements but compete with one another.

Decentralized systems are not systems where communication is impossible nor are they immutable. Decentralized systems are living systems who transiently occupy fixed equilibrium points until a consensus is achieved to evolve to a superior state. They are evolving and dynamic entities not fixed monoliths.

Well, that could be the case, but it would mean that the Nash equilibrium is not stable in time.  As such, it would be a randomly evolving system where nothing is "graved in stone", and the whole invention of crypto would in fact turn out to be a complicated thing that doesn't achieve anything else but what we have always known: a hierarchical system where the upper layers modify the rules at unexpected moments to suit their advantages and which would reinforce their positions by the insider-knowledge they only posses about the new rules.

This could very well be the final outcome of the bitcoin experiment.  But if there's a hierarchy of decision makers, it has nothing decentralized.

Decentralization for decentralization's sake has no purpose.  However, decentralization as a tool for immutability makes sense.  If immutability cannot be achieved through decentralization, it is a lot of hassle for nothing.  After all, if any kind of wealth-weighted majority rule can impose their will upon a wealth-weighted minority, which will be the case if modifications are even possible, then crypto has nothing to offer that centralized systems don't do already, with less hassle.  The potential uniqueness of crypto is the immutability of the rules.  The tool to achieve that is decentralisation, the inability to come to agreements over changes.  If that's gone from the system, it has nothing to offer.

Decentralised systems are intricately linked to the idea of self-organisation—a phenomenon in which local interactions between components of a system establish order and coordination to achieve global goals without a central commanding influence. The rules specifying these interactions emerge from local information and in the case of biological (or biologically-inspired) agents, from the closely linked perception and action system of the agents. These interactions continually form and depend on spatio-temporal patterns, which are created through the positive and negative feedback that the interactions provide.

Yes.  But the idea of crypto decentralization was exactly that this interaction would lead to immutability.  If it doesn't, the protocol can change in arbitrary ways, as dictated by a wealth-weighted and influence-weighted set of participants that will use that power to gain more power and wealth in the process, because they know the changes they will impose, and the others don't, and hence they can anticipate the economic consequences of it, and use that advantage in the market, while others don't.  And we have exactly what bitcoin was invented to avoid.

[CoinCube]

Well, that could be the case, but it would mean that the Nash equilibrium is not stable in time.  As such, it would be a randomly evolving system where nothing is "graved in stone", and the whole invention of crypto would in fact turn out to be a complicated thing that doesn't achieve anything else but what we have always known: a hierarchical system where the upper layers modify the rules at unexpected moments to suit their advantages and which would reinforce their positions by the insider-knowledge they only posses about the new rules.

This could very well be the final outcome of the bitcoin experiment.  But if there's a hierarchy of decision makers, it has nothing decentralized.

Decentralization for decentralization's sake has no purpose.  However, decentralization as a tool for immutability makes sense.

In my opinion you are dramatically misvaluing the potential of dynamical evolving consensus systems. However, this conversation is somewhat off topic so I will leave it at that.

You may be interested in the recent debate/discussion between sidhujag and r0ach on the relative merits of silver and cryptocurrency here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1082909.msg19220506#msg19220506

[Carlton Banks]

Well, I hope you all have fun with your Bitcoin fork. I'll be selling my Barrycoins, TYVM


Re-centralisation for the win, lol

[ComputerGenie]

Here's the real question:

No matter what change happens, how much of it will be because x% believed it should, and even further, how much x exists solely because of the mentality of "everybody else is..." and/or "It's all the same to me and I just don't want WidgetCo to get their way; they want a so I'll vote for b"?

[dinofelis]

Here's the real question:

No matter what change happens, how much of it will be because x% believed it should, and even further, how much x exists solely because of the mentality of "everybody else is..." and/or "It's all the same to me and I just don't want WidgetCo to get their way; they want a so I'll vote for b"?

This is why, if this kind of change is, in the end, possible, it is taking away from crypto its reason of existence.   After all, if such kind of change is possible because "people vote", then we get the same kind of manipulation, power abuse, and everything else we already have in our current societies without the crypto hassle.  If crypto has any value, it would reside in the inability to change the rules no matter how much one tries.  If "graved in stone" means "graved in stone until someone modifies it", duh.

[CoinCube]

This is why, if this kind of change is, in the end, possible, it is taking away from crypto its reason of existence.   After all, if such kind of change is possible because "people vote", then we get the same kind of manipulation, power abuse, and everything else we already have in our current societies without the crypto hassle.  If crypto has any value, it would reside in the inability to change the rules no matter how much one tries.  If "graved in stone" means "graved in stone until someone modifies it", duh.

Government by consensus is not stagnation or immutability. It does not free one from politics or lock the system into a static state of guaranteed obsolescence.

It is the currently vastly under appreciated next evolutionary step in the regulation of human affairs. Just as monarchy was an incremental improvement over despotism and representative democracy was a step up from monarchy government by consensus is a further improvement an evolution in governance that is currently in its infancy.

With any new form to governance there is inevitable resistance from people used to doing business under the older paradigm. Despots angered at their inability to impose their will have at times violently overthrown democracies. Similarly individuals used to getting their way with simple majorities seeth at the difficulties inherent in building a broad consensus and yearn to use majorities and economic force to subdue their opponents. This ultimately is the source of all this contentious hard fork talk.

Sustained increases in living conditions result only from gains in knowledge. Top-down control plays in role in the the organization needed to facilitate the emergence of new knowledge. Top-down control facilitates its own removal for new knowledge eventually circumvents and undermines the prior order allowing society to climb to higher energy systems. The new system is also one of top-down control but the knowledge gained allows for an overall relaxation of the imposed order increasing economic degrees-of-freedom.

The evolution of the social contract is a progressive climb to higher potential energy systems with increased degrees of freedom. The state of nature begat tribalism. Tribalism grew into despotism. Despotism advanced into monarchy. Monarchies were replaced by republics. It is likely that in the near future republics will be consumed by world government, and perhaps someday world government will evolve into decentralized government.

Each iteration has a common theme for each advance increases the number of individuals able to engage in cooperative activity while lowering the number of individuals able to defect. Each iteration increases the sustainable degrees of freedom the system can support.  

Cycles of Contention

		Cycle #1	Cycle #2	Cycle #3	Cycle #4	Cycle #5	Cycle #6
	Mechanism of Control	Knowledge of Evil	Warlordism	Holy War	Usury	Universal Surveillance	Hedonism
	Rulers	The Strong	Despots	God Kings/Monarchs	Capitalists	Oligarchs (NWO)	Decentralized Government
	Life of the Ruled	"Nasty, Brutish, Short"	Slaves	Surfs	Debtors	Basic Income Recipients	Knowledge Workers
	Facilitated Advance	Knowledge of Good	Commerce	Rule of Law	Growth	Transparency	Ascesis

 

[CoinCube]

Well, I hope you all have fun with your Bitcoin fork. I'll be selling my Barrycoins, TYVM

Out of curiosity what path forward are you proposing as an alternative and do you feel a consensus can be built around that path?

[dinofelis]

Government by consensus is not stagnation or immutability. It does not free one from politics or lock the system into a static state of guaranteed obsolescence.

This is simply a centralized power game, nothing else ; business as usual.  You will have a hierarchical system with "a leader / king" supported by an "aristocracy of important people" and then the "populace" that is made to cheer for their leaders and to beg for solutions to their problems.  You will have palace revolutions, where some usurper will manipulate the populace to replace the corrupt king and his corrupt aristocracy by himself and his aristocracy.

The only thing crypto had to offer, was immutability.  Yes, that induces "obsolescence" if it were badly designed, but there is no problem with that.  Crypto didn't need to be eternal ; hard forking is the way forward, offering myriads of choices, like in a free market where each individual entity can offer his fork, and see if it works in the market ; not by collectivism into a uniform monopoly that is the feast of aristocracy.  

If the rule set is obsolete, let it lose out to free competition, not by collectivist central decision - even if that central decision is bought with votes - voting is a way to buy power because it suffers from a tragedy of the commons problem: if you vote badly, your error is dispatched over all: there is no individual punishment for voting badly, in the same way that there is no individual reward for pouring wine in the big barrel.   Voting correctly is costly and difficult, it is not free.  It costs effort and insight to vote correctly.   This is why a free market is superior over a collectivist voting system: in a free market, if you "vote" badly, the loss is on you, and on you only ; in a collectivist voting system, the loss due to your bad vote is on everyone.  This is why voting is the tool of the central hierarchy to keep the power: as the majority doesn't invest in their vote, it is easily bought, and the minority that knows, is overwhelmed by the majority that ignores, to the profit of the central power with the excuse that the "majority" voted.

True decentralisation leads to immutability, simply because if you would have, say, 5 million users, and 100 000 miners in the network, all of them having small fractions of mining hash rate, all of them running hundreds of different node software by hundreds of different teams, there would simply be no way in even contacting them ; as most of them would be anonymous.  There wouldn't even be a platform to PROPOSE changes, as there's no way to know if even a very small fraction of the concerned users would look at it.  So you see that a truly decentralized system with sufficiently many and small and varied entities can only agree upon an immutable protocol.   If a system with a very high "entropy of decentralization" is immutable, it means that a 'true decentralized system" should be immutable, and that if it can evolve, it simply means that the "entropy of decentralization" is too small.  This is why I consider that the true definition of decentralisation is the absence of POSSIBLE agreement between more than a few insignificant entities.

"gouvernance" is simply not possible in the limit of high decentralization and hence is contradictory to it.  If there can be governance (and governance is needed for collective change) then there is not sufficient decentralization because it means that this is a model that is not possible when decentralization increases.

It is the currently vastly under appreciated next evolutionary step in the regulation of human affairs. Just as monarchy was an incremental improvement over despotism and representative democracy was a step up from monarchy government by consensus is a further improvement an evolution in governance that is currently in its infancy.

There are, as always, only two kinds of human regulation: collectivist ones, and individualist ones.   Communism versus free market.  Kings versus anarchies.  As history has shown, anarchies usually contain power vacuums that install Kings, who abuse of their power to collect more wealth and power, until the system breaks down under its own weight, where a new power vacuum is filled in by another King (whether he got there by violence or by votes doesn't matter).  From the moment that there is a uniform system where the minority is eaten by the "will" of the majority or not, we have collectivism.
Crypto could have had a value if it could maintain everyone out of the power vacuum which would be the case if its rules were immutable, because there's no power to be had with an immutable system.  It was its only value proposition: it would have been a self-stabilizing anarchy, contrary to most anarchies that are unstable under the power vacuum they create.  If within a crypto system, modification of the rules becomes possible, the power vacuum for the power to modify the rules will give rise to the same kind of collapse into a collectivist system as all the rest in human society.  

I think one could have designed bitcoin to avoid that, but one didn't.  It contains too many fundamental flaws to "stabilize the vacuum" (= immutability).  The central developer idea was already a central power, and the economy of scale of PoW will make it an oligarchy at best.

With any new form to gevernance there is inevitable resistance from people used to doing business under the older paradigm. Despots angered at their inability to impose their will have at times violently overthrown democracies. Similarly individuals used to getting their way with simple majorities seeth at the difficulties inherent in building a broad consensus and yearn to use majorities and economic force to subdue their opponents. This ultimately is the source of all this contentious hard fork talk.

This is why immutability is the right solution.  There can not be any power struggle, because there's nothing to have power over.  If you don't like it, you are free to fork off, and take your followers with you.  But you don't impose anything on even one single individual.

I have the impression that "wanting to keep the unity of the chain" looks like having to modify Ford-T in the "ideal car for everyone", and then the dispute goes over how we have to change the Ford-T wheel, how we have to change the Ford-T engine, and we have to come to a "consensus" over what car is now the best car for everyone.   No, it is much better that if someone has a better car in mind than the Ford-T, he builds it, and puts it on the market, in competition with the Ford-T.  And if 10 people have 10 different ideas, they make 10 different cars out of the original Ford-T and everyone picks what he wants.  This is the "individualist" / free market approach, over the collectivist "all together in unity" form.  In the first approach, there is no power game, there's just the market.  In the latter, ALL is power game. 

If crypto is well designed, it leads to immutability, so there's no power struggle possible.  Those that want to do so, exhaust themselves without arriving at anything.  They should hard-fork and test their ideas in the market, not try to get "a large majority" on their side.

[d5000]

A chain split would mean a severe usability reduction. Every user that uses a certain number of Bitcoin services (e.g. exchanges, merchant sites, remittance services) is deprived from using a part of them in the case of a chain split if he doesn't want to use both chains.

I don't see why.  After all, a chain split doesn't "halve" the users or the coins: the old chain remains exactly as it was, with all the holdings etc... and all its functionality, and all its users.  Of course, if the old chain loses traction, then of course, it will lose out to the new chain - but I don't see the difference with an alt coin.

The difference is that the altcoin is visible from the start as a clearly separated ecosystem, while in the case of an chainsplit that is not so clear. In every chain split there will be services that were available to the users of the existing chain that limit themselves to only one chain (because of ideology or practical considerations). So it's most probable you, as an user, couldn't use all the services you were used to after the split, because otherwise you would have to use both chains.

In addition, there is the value/price problem. Money is useful because it's an unit of account. Even now without chain split Bitcoin is volatile, but at least for short-term operations it is usable. What would you do as an user if the chain splits and you have to care about the value you posess? You would have to sell your holdings on the chain you don't want to use anymore (e.g. because of there are no services that support it) on an exchange. Even if the prices of Chain A + Chain B reach the price of the old chain, it's a major usability hassle to have to worry about that.

For these reasons, I consider mainstream adoption is not possible with a constantly forking blockchain. Bitcoin would be restricted to a niche market of nerds and some speculators.

Well, I'm absolutely convinced that the market prices of coins have *strictly* nothing to do with any form of usage, but are purely speculative.  Under any realistic estimation, the demand of bitcoin for usage (buying stuff with, apart from buying alt coins or fiat) should result in a bitcoin price of, say, $20,- to $100,- at this moment (I can explain this with Fisher's formula).

At the moment it's mostly speculation on future use that fuels the price. Bitcoin's $2000+ wouldn't be possible if there wasn't the dream of Bitcoin being a global currency in the future, and yes for that to work it must be mainstream friendly. And it isn't true that prices have nothing to do with usage: often news that are indicating growing usage (adoption by a large merchant, "legalization" in a country like Japan etc.) do have impact in the price.

We can go back to the $20 times without usage and experiment with hard forks and chain splits all the time until we find the best implementation, but I consider most of the community would not like this vision There are already a lot of investments made and companies that wouldn't be happy at all.

Yes, but that is exactly what a fork is (see above).  There's no difference in principle between a compacted new genesis block with a coinbase that gives the bitcoin owners their original holdings in the new coin, and a "clumsy genesis block" which is a 140 GB piece of block chain.

There is a difference, because even in a blockchain with a snapshot-based genesis block the ecosystems are clearly separated from the start. Such a "genesis fork" is the type of fork I don't consider harmful. It's mostly a "social" or "communication" difference, but I consider it very important because of the problems I outlined above in the case of a chain split of an existing coin.

That's also why I support the agreement and only would support UASF in the case it has a real chance to get a supermajority of miners, exchanges/economy and users.

But if that is the case, no UASF is necessary because the Core stuff would activate.

95% for a soft fork is a very high threshold and can be blocked by every pool. I would be happy with a 75%-80% majority, in this case I would fully support the UASF because there will be clearly a majority and a minority chain.

[CoinCube]

Government by consensus is not stagnation or immutability. It does not free one from politics or lock the system into a static state of guaranteed obsolescence.

This is simply a centralized power game, nothing else ; business as usual.  You will have a hierarchical system with "a leader / king" supported by an "aristocracy of important people" and then the "populace" that is made to cheer for their leaders and to beg for solutions to their problems.  You will have palace revolutions, where some usurper will manipulate the populace to replace the corrupt king and his corrupt aristocracy by himself and his aristocracy.

The only thing crypto had to offer, was immutability.  Yes, that induces "obsolescence" if it were badly designed, but there is no problem with that.  Crypto didn't need to be eternal ; hard forking is the way forward, offering myriads of choices, like in a free market where each individual entity can offer his fork, and see if it works in the market ; not by collectivism into a uniform monopoly that is the feast of aristocracy.  

Yes to some degree cryptocurrency is a hierarchical system this is inevitable and even desirable. Decentralization does not mean an equal voice for all (or equally negligible voice for all in the case of eternal immutability) and it never will. What cryptocurrency offers is growing immutability without emergent consensus for change which is something else entirely.

Politics is unavoidable as long as humans are part of the system. The "solution" of continuous divisive hard forking is a value destroying proposition as the underlying value of the system is determined not by the system itself but by the individuals choosing to voluntary transact in it and store capital in it.

We can and should develop innovations with different rule sets. These should be separate and parallel projects which allows for rapid free market innovation without shattering the consensus value of the original chain. If these innovations can be merged into bitcoin they will be once consensus exists for this either as modifications to the protocol or as side chains. If these innovations cannot be merged into bitcoin they will exist as stand alone projects of value.

As d5000 noted above mainstream adoption is not possible with a constantly and contentiously forking blockchain. Bitcoin would be restricted to a niche market of nerds and speculators. I am among those who find a return of the bitcoin price to $20 while we experiment with multiple embittered hard forks and chain splits an unattractive proposition. Those without an investment in bitcoin and those who have shorted bitcoin may find this option more appealing.

True decentralisation leads to immutability, simply because if you would have, say, 5 million users, and 100 000 miners in the network, all of them having small fractions of mining hash rate, all of them running hundreds of different node software by hundreds of different teams, there would simply be no way in even contacting them ; as most of them would be anonymous.  There wouldn't even be a platform to PROPOSE changes, as there's no way to know if even a very small fraction of the concerned users would look at it.  

This represents a fundamental misconception of the future. We are moving into an era of ever increasing transparency interconnectedness and communication. In the future it will be much easier to contact these node operators and propose changes then it is today. Anonymity will effectively cease to exist.  

Cryptocurrency will not eliminate politics. Smaller players will indeed align under "aristocrats". I as a lowly bitcointalk commentator have throw my support (for whatever it is worth) behind -ck who as a pool operator and mining software developer is one of bitcoin's "nobility". He along with the other influential players will see if they can find something that they all agree on and most of the rest of us will happily cheer for our leaders when they solve problems. This is the reality of the system. It's not perfect but it is a heck of a lot better then 51% majority rules and is why I fully expect bitcoin not to fall to $20 amidst weekly contentious and fracturing hardforks but to climb to $4000 and beyond as it gradually incorporates improvements and development under the watchful eyes of those most capable of managing these things.

There are, as always, only two kinds of human regulation: collectivist ones, and individualist ones.   Communism versus free market.  Kings versus anarchies.  As history has shown, anarchies usually contain power vacuums that install Kings, who abuse of their power to collect more wealth and power, until the system breaks down under its own weight, where a new power vacuum is filled in by another King.

I actually have a lot to say on this last point of yours but I would be veering off topic so I will refrain except to say that your analysis here implies a recurrent static cycle when the underlying reality is a progressive climb to higher levels of coordination and freedom. The emergence of bitcoin and government by consensus represents another step to said higher levels.

If you are interested in my thoughts on this last point I would refer you this prior post of mine:

The Nature of Progress

[-ck]

Well, I hope you all have fun with your Bitcoin fork. I'll be selling my Barrycoins, TYVM

Out of curiosity what path forward are you proposing as an alternative and do you feel a consensus can be built around that path?

Carlton is a fan of uasf+pow change if I'm not mistaken...

[ComputerGenie]

Well, I hope you all have fun with your Bitcoin fork. I'll be selling my Barrycoins, TYVM

Out of curiosity what path forward are you proposing as an alternative and do you feel a consensus can be built around that path?

Carlton is a fan of uasf+pow change if I'm not mistaken...

In other words: turning Bitcoin into NotBitCoin. 

[Searing]

As an aside, how likely is it for USAF in August?

Ugly, though it may be, is it likely to work? Or if not work,
Cobble along and add momentum to a better fix?

[Paashaas]

Well, I hope you all have fun with your Bitcoin fork. I'll be selling my Barrycoins, TYVM

Out of curiosity what path forward are you proposing as an alternative and do you feel a consensus can be built around that path?

Carlton is a fan of uasf+pow change if I'm not mistaken...

In other words: turning Bitcoin into NotBitCoin.  

It's needed to get rid of that annoying little brats called Jihan Wu and Roger Ver.

[ComputerGenie]

In other words: turning Bitcoin into NotBitCoin.  

It's needed to get rid of that annoying little brats called Jihan Wu and Roger Ver.

Thank you for being the perfect example of:

..."It's all the same to me and I just don't want WidgetCo to get their way; they want a so I'll vote for b"?

[Wind_FURY]

Well, I hope you all have fun with your Bitcoin fork. I'll be selling my Barrycoins, TYVM


Re-centralisation for the win, lol

I have the same thoughts here and the UASF will start on August 1. I believe the price will be very volatile and with a tendency to go down. I will buy back if everything has calmed down.

[-ck]

A small aside: Bitclub Network has moved back to signalling segwit.

[Argon2]

Well, I hope you all have fun with your Bitcoin fork. I'll be selling my Barrycoins, TYVM

Out of curiosity what path forward are you proposing as an alternative and do you feel a consensus can be built around that path?

Carlton is a fan of uasf+pow change if I'm not mistaken...

In other words: turning Bitcoin into NotBitCoin.  

It's needed to get rid of that annoying little brats called Jihan Wu and Roger Ver.

Jihan Wu is backing this agreement. Roger Ver is still backing the BU horse.

[Lorilikes]

I think the best solution in this situation would be Core to support Segwit2MB.

That's probably the desired goal of this agreement.  All the drama queens in this thread were assuming that the miners were going to suddenly fork away without developer support, but if you think about it, that seems pretty unlikely.  This whole thing could just be the miners simply saying "come a little closer to our stance and you might have a deal", although admittedly including a pretty strong ultimatum in the process.  Plus all the 'Chicken-Little' crybabies can't seem to take solace from the fact that this completely derails even the slightest possibility of 'emergent consensus' happening.

After some consideration, I think my first impression was wrong.  In all likelihood, this isn't an escalation, this is a concession from miners.  SegWit is happening and BU isn't.  The rift in the community just shrank a little (but I fully expect everyone on the forums/reddit/etc to act the opposite and keep going full retard at each other like their lives depended on it).

And if people don't want 2MB straight away, you know what you need to do.

This is brilliant!  I especially like the descriptive text that refers to the emergent consensus factor.  "chicken-little cry babies"  are just the right words, my stomach aches from laughter.

[dinofelis]

Yes to some degree cryptocurrency is a hierarchical system this is inevitable and even desirable. Decentralization does not mean an equal voice for all (or equally negligible voice for all in the case of eternal immutability) and it never will. What cryptocurrency offers is growing immutability without emergent consensus for change which is something else entirely.

Decentralization doesn't mean "an equal voice".  It means "nobody has a voice, so there's no need to try to shout".  

Politics is unavoidable as long as humans are part of the system. The "solution" of continuous divisive hard forking is a value destroying proposition as the underlying value of the system is determined not by the system itself but by the individuals choosing to voluntary transact in it and store capital in it.

Forking doesn't alter anything to the fundamental speculative nature of "store of value".  Store of value is always a risky bet on the future, in fact on a future belief system.  You hope that the asset that is supposed to store your value will be appreciated in the future.  With monetary assets, that's always a risky business, because they are "hollow" (no utility).  A good store of value is most of the time linked to economic utility, in the form of shares of a value-producing company, real estate, or things like that.  The only exception seems to be gold.  

I don't think crypto can be a good long term store of value, exactly because it is hollow, and can be forked as much as you'd like.  Bitcoin was not meant to be a store of value, it was meant to be a currency (but is ill designed for that).  The collectible-design and the huge initial seigniorage have turned bitcoin into a highly speculative asset, which makes it a bad currency, and also a bad store of value, but a great betting token, which is what it became.

There will only be one way to stop forking off bitcoin: by having it legally forbidden to fork, and by declaring bitcoin a fiat currency, of which the protocol is to be determined by some or other international body of politicians (including more printing of coins, or not, etc...).  

It is strange that you consider that immutability is not part of the aimed-for dynamics of crypto, but that "not finding an agreement and being separatists" is considered a bad idea.  It is much more probable that one finds disagreements and splitting-off rather than total consensus, unless there's a powerful way to enforce this consensus.  

We can and should develop innovations with different rule sets. These should be separate and parallel projects which allows for rapid free market innovation without shattering the consensus value of the original chain.

Well, this is a living ecosystem in which many different ways can be explored.   Apart from the "new genesis block virgin chain" and the standard "hard fork", there are many intermediate possibilities, which haven't been explored yet.  

The problem with a "virgin new coin" is that you have to build a whole new eco system.  The problem with a standard hard fork is that you give a lot of new coins to people that may actually be hostile to this coin, and are going to dump it to oblivion.  You could do intermediate things, such as a hard fork that requires burning the coins on the other chain if you want to transact (all of it, or just part of it).  There are myriads of ways to make chains evolve, cross over, interact, that do NOT require any form of consensus.

If these innovations can be merged into bitcoin they will be once consensus exists for this either as modifications to the protocol or as side chains. If these innovations cannot be merged into bitcoin they will exist as stand alone projects of value.

As I said, there are many other potential ways that do not require any form of consensus, and that interact with the bitcoin ecosystem.  Standard hard forks are one such way, but there are plenty of other potential ways.

As d5000 noted above mainstream adoption is not possible with a constantly and contentiously forking blockchain. Bitcoin would be restricted to a niche market of nerds and speculators.

That's in any case the case, simply because that potential exists.  If "immutability" is not part of the system, then crypto has not much to offer apart from gambling, or indeed, currency usage, but only as quick payment between obtaining the coins and exchanging them back to fiat or whatever has more guaranteed value.

After all, new forks are nothing else but individual initiatives in the same way that "putting competing cars on the market" are also individual initiatives that don't need the agreement of all the existing car constructors ; forking off is nothing else but sending owners of a Ford a letter that they now also own a Toyota, and an invitation to sell their Ford to buy a second Toyota.  Who is Ford to stop Toyota from doing this ?

The ecosystem of splitting and mixing different chains has not yet been started to be explored. It is much more difficult with PoW coins of course, because the masters of the game are the mining pools, which are few in number ; but with PoS coins, you can split as much as you want, because you don't need PoW for cryptographic security.
 

I am among those who find a return of the bitcoin price to $20 while we experiment with multiple embittered hard forks and chain splits an unattractive proposition.

This is because you don't really want bitcoin to be ideal money but as a speculative vehicle to become rich.  Which is indeed what bitcoin's initial design is made for, but not what it was announced to be.  If bitcoin is to be a currency, it cannot be an investment vehicle and even less a speculative asset.

There are ways to make such crypto.  Maybe one day, I'll try to make one.  But I think it will not be very successful, because by now, bitcoin has made the crypto scene into a highly speculative "get rich quickly" game, and the idea of having a freedom means of payment without any possibility to make much profit with it, is now essentially dead.  In other words, my idea is that bitcoin has very successfully succeeded in killing exactly that what it pretended to be.

This represents a fundamental misconception of the future. We are moving into an era of ever increasing transparency interconnectedness and communication. In the future it will be much easier to contact these node operators and propose changes then it is today. Anonymity will effectively cease to exist.  

Then, decentralization has no meaning.  After all, we can all have a transparent central server, and look at how politicians decide how it should work.  A simple law that obliges all banks to render all people's accounts public would have exactly the same effect and we don't need any crypto.

A transparent, hierarchical future is shear horror.  My only interest in crypto was to have a growing, anonymous, underground economy that can bribe the transparent economy and politics to death without ever revealing anything about its inner workings.  This would then be the way in which the machines could take over society without any of us ever knowing how it could happen.
If you can have a large underground anonymous economy, that can buy homicide, that can buy all deciders (economical, political, judges, military...) etc... to make them part of a system they are not aware off, you can finally make a real "deep state" nobody knows about, which could in the end be a network of machines without any human in control, to subjugate humanity and make unknown machines the new dominant species on earth.  That's what I saw as the future of crypto.