Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cypherdoc]

@jonny1000

ok, let's go with your "impose on the network" argument and apply it to the soft forking of full nodes that's been going on for a while now.

let's assume for a moment that all other clients in the network other than the 26% Satoshi 0.12.1 are against CSV. since they have not upgraded, i could argue that those 74% of full nodes are being imposed upon/attacked by the 26% minority.

 

[jonny1000]

What then is your understanding of Blockstream's business model? How do its investors expect to get a return?

I think the business model is unclear, just like many other companies in the space. I think the main objective is to help the ecosystem to grow and succeed. I think Blockstream and their investors are invested in bitcoin the unit.

Is it by exploiting LN or similar layers on top of bitcoin, and if so, is this not consistent with the widespread perception that Blockstream has a vested interest 1) in restricting bitcoin's blocksize limit and also 2) that they need Segwit for their own purposes?

I think these are unsubstantiated malicious falsehoods. There may be deliberately nefarious origins to this rumor and nefarious forces may be spreading these stories for malicious reasons. Unfortunately some honorable people with Bitcoin's best interests at heart may now believe these falsehoods.

Many Blockstream employees have held the same view on the blocksize issue well before the company was formed and from when the ecosystem was much smaller. In addition to this many Blockstream employees have been involved in the field of electronic cash systems well before Bitcoin. The LN idea is not Blockstream's. Blockstream had the sidechain idea, which I am quite skeptical of.

[doublepost=1463803407][/doublepost]

You're coming across like an extremest, first off I'll take a guess the only reason your travel costs to fly to Hong Kong were sponsors was because of your irrational opposition to the status quo to adopt large blocks.

In the interests of disclosure, the sponsors of the Scaling II conference did reimburse my travel costs to Hong Kong. I paid my own costs for Scaling I.

[doublepost=1463803921,1463803164][/doublepost]

let's assume for a moment that all other clients in the network other than the 26% Satoshi 0.12.1 are against CSV. since they have not upgraded, i could argue that those 74% of full nodes are being imposed upon/attacked by the 26% minority.

Adoption of a softfork is voluntary on node operators. A softfork can add a new rule to the network and a majority of miners are able to force this new rule on the network. As the whitepaper says:

They vote with their CPU power, expressing their acceptance of valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on them. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism

Miner's can therefore force new rules on the network. Instead of using 51%, Core are being respectful and ensuring consensus by using a 95% threshold for their softforks.

A hardfork is an elimination of an existing rule. The whitepaper makes no mention of this. This is the most extreme kind of change as any change on the network can occur, for example confiscation of others peoples bitcoin. In order to do this all nodes need to upgrade, both mining and non mining nodes. If a non mining node does not upgrade, it will end up on a different chain, this is not my opinion but a fact. This how the nodes behave in reality. This change has never occurred in Bitcoin's history.

I do think we should do a hardfork to increase the blocksize limit. I prefer BIP100, but a one off switch to 2MB may be the easiest thing we can agree on. However, we need to ensure strong consensus when the hardfork occurs. There seems to be disagreement on the need for strong consensus, with some people happy locking in 25% miner opposition at the time of activation.

One thing I hope we can agree on, to paraphrase John Lennon, is to at least try to get strong consensus, "all we are saying, is give strong consensus a chance".

 

[Zarathustra]

@jonny1000

"A hardfork is an elimination of an existing rule."

No, in this case, the hardfork would be an elimination of a junk code. Satoshi's code became junk when those traitors @core tried to transform a temporary limit into a permanent one. At least 95% of the users in this thread (which has been banned by thermos/core) know it. Orwellian newspeak won't help in uncensored forums, which are not supported by core. A hardfork is a prevention from a new economic rule that the streamblockers are trying to enforce. A prevention from a terror attack.

 

[freetrader]

@jonny1000 :

Adoption of a softfork is voluntary on node operators.

Technically true, but sophistry. When the majority of a minority (the miners) have activated a soft-fork, the rest of the node operators have a choice between:

[ ] complying and upgrading if they want to keep on fully validating
[ ] accepting that their nodes have been degraded and are no longer fully validating
(while NOT being able to veto the change)
[ ] turning to some other cryptocurrency where their voice is respected

A regular node operator cannot veto a softfork, by design. Hence adoption is hardly 'voluntary'.

A softfork can add a new rule to the network and a majority of miners are able to force this new rule on the network.

There, you said it: "a majority of miners". Which equates to a minority of users in the Bitcoin ecosystem. If this goes against the wishes of the majority of users, they could also view it as an attack.

 

[Inca]

I think the business model is unclear, just like many other companies in the space. I think the main objective is to help the ecosystem to grow and succeed. I think Blockstream and their investors are invested in bitcoin the unit.

Ha. You revealed too much bias with that crock of shit. BS are singlehandedly responsible for averting this latest attempt to rally pre-Halving.

 

[jonny1000]

No, in this case, the hardfork would be an elimination of a junk code. Satoshi's code became junk when those traitors @core tried to transform a temporary limit into a permanent one.

When I call the 1MB limit a rule I mean it purely in the sense that it is a technical requirement which blocks need to follow. If new block comes out that is 1.1MB large, existing nodes will not regard it as valid and existing miners will not build on top of it. That is all I mean. The rule may or may not be:

• a joke,
  
• stupid,
  
• junk,
  
• evil,
  
• imposing unfavorable economic changes on the network,
  
• have been intended to be temporary,
  
• be unpopular,
  
• have been put there with malicious intent, or
  
• be destructive

Either way it is still a rule.

Then the majority of a minority (the miners) have activated a soft-fork, the rest of the node operators have a choice between:

[ ] complying and upgrading if they want to keep on fully validating
[ ] accepting that their nodes have been degraded and are no longer fully validating
(while NOT being able to veto the change)
[ ] turning to some other cryptocurrency where their voice is respected

That may or may not be true, softforks do not necessarily have anything to do with validation. In general nodes will validate the new rules if the upgrade. There could be a softfork that says each block must send 1 BTC fee to a particular address, that would clearly be bad, but old nodes would still validate everything, the only thing old nodes would not validate would be the inclusion of the 1 BTC fee transaction.

There, you said it: "a majority of miners". Which equates to a minority of users in the Bitcoin ecosystem. If this goes against the wishes of the majority of users, they could also view it as an attack.

Yes a softfork could be an attack. The most cited example is a softfork requiring that all new blocks contain no transactions apart from the coinbase transaction. I guess that is the most severe kind of attack. However this option is always available to 51% of miners and it is not as severe as taking other people's money, which can be done with a hardfork.

 

[Inca]

@jonny1000 claiming the 1mb rule is a fundamental part of the 'golden rules' which guide the bitcoin protocol is ridiculous.

Read the white paper. I don't recall a single message or comment where Satoshi says he has designed this really great system which will grow organically for 7 years then reach an artificial capacity limit based around a constant introduced as a temporary anti-spam feature.

Of course the reason it isn't in the white paper is because it was introduced 2 years later as a temporary measure against early attack. At that stage the proposed maximum blocksize was 10,000 times higher than actual block sizes and the technical characteristics of the bitcoin network today and the internet infrastructure supporting it was completely unknown.

I actually don't care how bitcoin scales up from here technically - we know it cannot infinitely, but we also know it can easily rise at least x4 from here TODAY to absorb more transaction demand with little tradeoff in terms of useful loss of decentralisation.

Preventing that from occurring is virtually guaranteed to kill bitcoin dead in terms of attracting bitcoin investment which is ironically exactly what is needed to create the holy settlement network we hear so much of.

---

For the usual readers it seems Maxwell has finally come out in public and, surprise surprise, doesn't support the HK agreement. Goodbye HF. Goodnight bitcoin. It might sound sensationalised but failure to hard fork some on chain scaling back into bitcoin is now an existential threat to it's very survival. Meanwhile the price drifts lower ahead of what should have been the most bullish time period in the last four years. I hope my tongue-in-cheek post about the 'Maxwell Great Crash' doesn't come to pass as the bitcoin ecosystem lurches ever more Orwellian and this thread is increasingly filled with horrified Cassandra clones.

 

[bluemoon]

I do not think the miners where that concerned about the details of SegWit. Many miners wanted the agreement to say the non witness data limit would be increased to around 2MB.

So it seems:

1. If SW was not contentious, then Blockstream Core's intention was simply to persuade the miners not to run Classic, ever.
2. In return Blockstream Core agreed to a HF in the distant future to about 2MB.
3. That concession took until the small hours for Blockstream Core to agree, presumably because Adam and others realised it would not go down well with Greg and others.

So what had Blockstream Core tried offering the miners before conceding the HF?

I think the business model is unclear, just like many other companies in the space. I think the main objective is to help the ecosystem to grow and succeed. I think Blockstream and their investors are invested in bitcoin the unit.

I think these are unsubstantiated malicious falsehoods. There may be deliberately nefarious origins to this rumor and nefarious forces may be spreading these stories for malicious reasons. Unfortunately some honorable people with Bitcoin's best interests at heart may now believe these falsehoods.

Many Blockstream employees have held the same view on the blocksize issue well before the company was formed and from when the ecosystem was much smaller. In addition to this many Blockstream employees have been involved in the field of electronic cash systems well before Bitcoin. The LN idea is not Blockstream's. Blockstream had the sidechain idea, which I am quite skeptical of.

1) It is clear Blockstream Core are determined above all to maintain control of the reference bitcoin client. This is Blockstream's benefit from the HK agreement and is reflected in their, and your own, 'attack' rhetoric regarding alternative implementations.

2) Also that they wish to restrict the blocksize limit: if they were not concerned they would have brought forward a HF to effect this long ago and there would never have been any 'attack'. And it is consistent with the views of many Blockstream employees (as you yourself indicate) and also their repeatedly expressed desire to create a "fee market" for on-chain transactions.

3) It is also clear Blockstream Core favour the development of off-chain solutions to scaling issues: these benefit from throttling on-chain transaction growth and are probably reliant on it. Blockstream has offered LN as a solution to the scaling crisis and, as you say, already pursued side chains.

i) These facts are all perfectly consistent with and give credence to Jihan's statements.

ii) The idea that Blockstream themselves intend to monetise off-chain solutions, for which they need to implement Segwit, is also consistent with the facts.

You continue to deny @Jihan's version of events and the idea that Blockstream have any interest in exploiting off-chain solutions, yet your alternative explanation that Blockstream's business model is "unclear", i.e. that they have no real idea how to profit from their activities, is very weak by comparison. It does not help your case that your attempt to refute Jihan is one of denigration and your denial of Blockstream's interest in off-chain solutions is an empty rant bursting with words like 'malicious', 'nefarious', 'rumour', and 'falsehood'. In any event, if their business model is unclear, how can you be so sure?

Even if we suppose Blockstream's main objective is to "help the ecosystem grow and succeed" they are a malign influence: they do not offer alternative implementations to the ecosystem as is normal in other open source projects. Instead they seek to monopolise the bitcoin client and shut down all competing offers, dissenting voices, and alternative views: that seems to be what you are intent on here; it is totalitarian.

And if Blockstream has no profit motive, why would highly profit motivated investors commit their funds? They are not charities and Blockstream is no charitable foundation. It is no surprise people wonder whether if Blockstream has no commercial interest, it is likely a front for banks or state agencies to subvert or otherwise control bitcoin.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

Yes a softfork could be an attack. The most cited example is a softfork requiring that all new blocks contain no transactions apart from the coinbase transaction. I guess that is the most severe kind of attack. However this option is always available to 51% of miners and it is not as severe as taking other people's money, which can be done with a hardfork.

The distinction between soft and hardforks is obsolete. The 51 % can always do as the like. Call it a hardfork, call it a softfork, it doesn't matter.
And, in fact, I think the distinction itself is already socially engineered to create tensions, like the current blocksize schism.

 

[sickpig]

That may or may not be true

really?

How this can be labelled as false. It seems to me that @freetrader applied sound logic while describing what are the available options that a node operator has while dealing with a soft fork.

I'm interested in understanding why you think what freetrader said could be false.

softforks do not necessarily have anything to do with validation.

of course, soft-fork could potentially change other thing than consensus rule. still in this context it's extremely clear what are the kind of changes we are referring to.

now that I think about I can't easily find any soft forks that didn't change consensus rules(*), could you please please give me a pointer?

addendum:

one last bit about core devs: in the bitcointalk thread I mentioned yesterday you could find Luke-jr asking about the hard fork to Mircea Popescu and his crew. Do you think this is something worth pursuing?

Before responding please take into account that those people are using and maintaning an old version of bitcoin. I think they forked bitcoin code base at version 0.5, they are currently at version 0.5.4-TEST2. Such software doesn't even recognize multisig tx. You could find it here: http://thebitcoin.foundation.

You know what I found funny about it, if Gavin had chosen to deploy BIP 16 using an hard fork rather than a soft fork Mircea and is crew would not have used their relic bitcoind fork til today.


(*) BIP 65 and 66 do change consensus, also the 3 softforks included in 0.12.1 release BIP 68, 112 and 113 once active will change consensus rules

 

[Mengerian]

I do think we should do a hardfork to increase the blocksize limit. I prefer BIP100, but a one off switch to 2MB may be the easiest thing we can agree on. However, we need to ensure strong consensus when the hardfork occurs. There seems to be disagreement on the need for strong consensus, with some people happy locking in 25% miner opposition at the time of activation

So now we need consensus on the need for consensus before we can have consensus on the actual change?

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

We're finally touching the third rail, though only very gently. The next big step into the abyss would be for dark markets to start moving to altcoins substantially. Hopefully that will never happen, but if it does it is end times. IF that were to happen I'd have to, for the first time ever, seriously re-evaluate my Bitcoin investment thesis.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/4k13rh/btc_transaction_time_at_3_hours/

 

[yrral86]

We don't have bigger blocks yet because we are doing it wrong. We are trying to sway the minds of entrenched interests. Talk about pissing into the wind.

The path to bigger blocks is for the economic majority to become the mining majority. ASICs will soon be done with their optimization and will likely start to follow a Moore's law curve with occasional (rare) jumps in efficiency from taking advantage of some flexibility in the hashing computation. If miners are leveraged then raising difficulty will put them out of business or at least making them seek near term revenue.

We can shout "We are bitcoin!" all day, but until we mine we are not Bitcoin. I have mined solo blocks in the past, but I have been waiting out the ASIC optimization process. From here on out, gains will not come as easy as a die shrink.

The challenge is that ASIC hardware is hard to come by. There is little reason for the manufacturers to sell it instead of mining themselves. What we really need is for AMD, Intel, TI, or NVIDIA to make a hashing engine.

 

[AdrianX]

I think the business model is unclear, just like many other companies in the space. I think the main objective is to help the ecosystem to grow and succeed. I think Blockstream and their investors are invested in bitcoin the unit.

@jonny1000 The sentiment in this post suggests a total lack of understanding of business. You need to catch up on your history. I'd recommend reading "The Creature from Jekyll Island" to get an understanding of unclear business models when it comes to controlling the origins of money. Bankers aren't in the business of protecting your money they're in the business of making money out of thin air. To most that unclear.

Miner's can therefore force new rules on the network. Instead of using 51%, Core are being respectful and ensuring consensus by using a 95% threshold for their softforks.

We've seen how politicians like Adam Black use this vulnerability to pervert Bitcoin. Already he's proposed we change bitcoins emission scheme (a hard encoded rule) with a soft fork to compensate for the refusal to remove the restriction on block size.

He's suggested miners earn new bitcoins potentially orders of magnitudes over their existing income by implementing a soft fork to allow them to increase the number of blocks that can be found by adjusting the difficulty with a soft fork. these are the facts. What's next, the hard limit of 21M coins in the LN network when the time comes.

The elegance of this heresy is miners earn more and are motivated to break bitcoin's incentive design by implementing a Blockstream Core "Soft Fork" (no wonder Core see every competing implementation as a threat). The Centrally controlled BlueMatt Relay Network being a part of Core's roadmap is undoubtedly a part of the strategy to eliminate that orphan risk of those miners who follow, and exorcise those who don't follow the Blockstream Core lead.

This is the most extreme kind of change as any change on the network can occur, for example confiscation of others peoples bitcoin. In order to do this all nodes need to upgrade, both mining and non mining nodes. If a non mining node does not upgrade, it will end up on a different chain, this is not my opinion but a fact. This how the nodes behave in reality. This change has never occurred in Bitcoin's history.

The rational thinker assesses what is, not classing changes according to their masters wishes, in the case of Bitcoin the change is going to be unprecedented, you're classing the change to increasing the velocity of on chain bitcoin transactions to favor the most extreme radical idea ever. The idea to turn Bitcoin into a PoS system. It is very sad given the opportunity bitcoin presents to credit those who create value.

We Have:
a simple change to the block limit with a hard fork and continue development of Satoshi's Bitcoin.
or
Change how rules are implemented, by adopting a Soft Fork Scripting Language with Segregated Witness allowing bitcoin to move off the block chain and into centrally controlled hubs who use money substitutes as proxies for on blockchain transactions that will be funded by transaction fees based on nothing more than a belief* that they have credit on the bitcoin BlockChain. (*a hard coded rule that can be overruled by Soft Fork change when necessary)

Effectively moving bitcoin onto the Lightning Network manipulating miners to destroy Bitcoin by implementing asinine Soft Fork rules proposed by the likes of Adam Back and his masters to adjust the emission scheme and whatever new changes they dream up, or even just abstaining from upgrading the total velocity of transaction in bitcoin as set by the block size limit.

"all we are saying, is give strong consensus a chance". BS never in the history of the world has there been consensus, It's a stalling tactic. For the first time the only consensus I see is voluntary, and it is the one that's written into the blockchain as agreed by the majority of nodes that support the longest chain.

And now I'm being told to wait until a small minority of Core developers backed by $70M provided by the existing TPTB want me to wait until they find a new form of consensus that happens in layer 2 of the blockchain wile the likes of Adam Back suggest implementing Segregated Witness and a Scripting Language that allows layer 1 Blockchain rules to be changed at their will via a soft Fork. Yes dream on.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@jonny1000

Not to flood you with too much material to respond to, and again I credit you heartily for staying civil in the face of opposition to your view. But it would make me feel a lot better if Core adherents, small block supporters, and those who oppose controversial hard forks would acknowledge that there is altcoin competition, and that that means Bitcoin cannot afford to be as conservative as the most cautious people would want, or even the most cautious 6% (supposing a 95% consensus standard).

If Bitcoin is arbitrarily cautious on blocksize, for example, all it takes is a lucky role of the dice somewhere - anywhere - in the altcoin world that lands substantially closer to the ideal blocksize cap (assuming that is much higher, as we both agree). Then the much lower fees and much higher throughput in the altcoin (and/or one of its inevitable zillion clones) erode Bitcoin's network effect inexorably until something is done, consensus be damned. You can always keep your system and preserve whatever consensus standard you want, but if investors don't value it then I don't think most will be happy with the result.

 

[bitsko]

I appreciate the dialogue, @jonny1000

 

[cypherdoc]

SF, HF, left fork, right fork, whatever, it doesn't matter at this stage of the debate.

everybody and their mother knows about the controversy. she stands ready to hit the DL button before you do. more simply, look at the merits of each camp's proposal and decide which one you think is more prudent. factors to consider: ease of upgrade, speed of upgrade across network, code complexity aka technical debt, objectives, philosophy behind proposals, COI's, history compared to Satoshi's WP and posts, history of core devs proposing changes, etc. i'm sure you guys can come up with others.
[doublepost=1463849709][/doublepost]i actually don't think gvts will allow Blockstream to control core dev over the long run. there's no sense replacing CB's with Greg Maxwell & Adam Backtrack. they will find some way to route around BS if we can't:

Also during his speech, he stated that the money issue and the nationalization of the Russian economy have led to "disastrous results." "We in the history persists in repeating the same steps. And now we hear, "let's try to issue money," which will not cause somehow we have inflation, "let's - the state's economy because private business does not operate in the country." All this was led to disastrous results. We need to learn from our own history ", - quotes the head of Sberbank words TASS .

https://lenta.ru/news/2016/05/21/blockchain/

 

[Peter R]

Adoption of a softfork is voluntary on node operators. A softfork can add a new rule to the network and a majority of miners are able to force this new rule on the network. As the whitepaper says:

Miner's can therefore force new rules on the network. Instead of using 51%, Core are being respectful and ensuring consensus by using a 95% threshold for their softforks.

A hardfork is an elimination of an existing rule. The whitepaper makes no mention of this. This is the most extreme kind of change as any change on the network can occur, for example confiscation of others peoples bitcoin. In order to do this all nodes need to upgrade, both mining and non mining nodes. If a non mining node does not upgrade, it will end up on a different chain, this is not my opinion but a fact. This how the nodes behave in reality. This change has never occurred in Bitcoin's history.

One thing I hope we can agree on, to paraphrase John Lennon, is to at least try to get strong consensus, "all we are saying, is give strong consensus a chance".

I don't understand why you see the consensus requirements between hard and soft fork so differently. Both hard and soft forks can lead to equally bad results (e.g., we can confiscate coins with a soft fork). I think we should focus on the reality of what it takes to push through a hard or soft fork rather than the religious dogma that soft forks and hard forks are different on an ethical/moral level.

Like you said, a soft fork adds to the rule set whereas a hard fork removes from the rule set. That's it! Rolling out a hard fork is like rolling out a soft fork but in reverse. For a soft-forking change, nodes can upgrade asynchronously after the miners start enforcing a new rule. For a hard-forking change, nodes can upgrade asynchronously before the miners stop enforcing an old rule.

To make it more concrete, here's an example:

WHAT WOULD A SOFT-FORKING CHANGE FROM 2MB BACK TO 1MB LOOK LIKE?

Ans. Miners would coordinate some time in the future, t0, where they agree to no longer build on top of blocks greater than 1MB; that is, at time t = t0 they would enforce a more-restrictive rule set.

Non-mining nodes may elect to enforce the restricted rule set (i.e., begin rejecting blocks greater than 1MB) at any time t >= t0. However, they CANNOT enforce the restricted rule set for t < t0, without the risk of forking themselves off the network.

WHAT SHOULD A HARD-FORKING CHANGE FROM 1MB TO 2MB LOOK LIKE?

Ans. Miners would coordinate some point in the future, t0, where they agree to build on top of blocks greater than 1MB; that is, at time t = t0 they would enforce a less-restrictive rule set.

Non-mining nodes may elect to stop enforcing the old rule set (i.e., begin accepting blocks greater than 1MB) at any time t <= t0. However, they CANNOT continue to enforce the old rule set for t > t0, without the risk of forking themselves off the network.


My questions for @jonny1000 are:

• If nodes decide "hey, I want to allow blocks bigger than 1 MB today" and so cease to enforce the 1MB limit, how is this an attack?
• If miners see that most nodes will already accept larger blocks and decide to start making them, how is this an attack?

Personally, I see this process of nodes asynchronously ceasing to enforce rules they no longer agree with as exactly how consensus should emerge.

 

[cypherdoc]

gmax bashing Holy Luke now. i luv that guy:

Pfft. I'm not going to mislead people by failing to call it what it is-- going to have some secret meeting where you are massively outnumbered with no strong negotiator on your side where you let yourself get compelled to commit to random things which are either largely meaningless or violate other people's trust and confidence in you (or, in fact, commitments you made to others before leaving) is a truly foolish move, if not quite "publicly endorsing scammer-wright" grade.

It's not the end of the world, people screw up, shit happens, goes on on-- but someone here asked the question as to why Luke was going around polling segments of the community what kind of hardforks they'd find acceptable, and that is why. It is a disappointment because its likely to exacerbate and prolong some drama which could otherwise be largely over now.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1330553.msg14841283#msg14841283

 

[Mengerian]

I would be ok with this BIP95 and not regard it as an attack. It is a huge improvement on BIP109. However, I am unlikely to run it myself, I do not want to collaborate with an attack client. My preference is to put these 75% thresholds and 28 day activation period behind us. To me defeating the 75% and 28 day ideology is more important than the blocksize limit, we need to ensure the attack philosophy is defeated. People must stop trying to impose changes to the consensus rules on a significant number of others against their will.

The point I am trying to get at is that your approach of "defeating the attack" puts you in a position where you have to try to convince other people to change their beliefs and behaviors.

This, I would contend, is bound to lead you to frustration.

It would be much better to focus on approaches where you can work towards your goals through your own actions, and the cooperation of like-minded people. In other words, instead of trying to "defeat the attack", try to build a system that can achieve your ends while being resilient to attack. Accept that the misguided "attackers" will do their thing and route around them.

If everyone had to agree on a set of principles or and ideology for Bitcoin to achieve consensus, then I would have little hope in its future. The thing that makes the system so powerful is that it can achieve strong consensus through economic incentives that encourage convergence on a set of Schelling points. Bitcoin relies not on good will or enlightened participants, but on incentives.

The 1MB block size limit is a strong Schelling point that the network has converged on. Right now if a miner were to mine a block larger than 1MB, it would have roughly 100% chance of being orphaned. They won't do this because mining requires the sacrifice of real world resources to produce the proof of work. So miners who want to produce larger blocks have a huge incentive to coordinate with others before working on a fork. Even if BIP 109 were to "activate", a fork would not occur until a miner changes his block generation settings to produce a block larger than 1MB. This daring first miner who produces a larger block also has to spend real money to produce the block, so will likely do so carefully. Miners may very well choose to keep producing <1MB blocks even after BIP 109 activates, with no fork until they are confident that the vast majority of nodes, exchanges, and businesses will follow the new fork.

I'll also reiterate what the others have said, thanks for sticking it out here while being bombarded with arguments. I appreciate the different point of view!