Regarding Bitcoin Unlimited, I posted a version of the below idea a few pages back, and have been back and forth with a few of you on it. Here's what I'm thinking:
1) It's time there's a mining pool that many people and businesses could enthusiastically support. Such a pool would need to be a non-profit, registered and based in the US (where most bitcoin businesses are), and professionally and transparently run. No such pool currently exists, and consequently, bitcoin businesses, VCs, many users, etc, don't have a real outlet through which to voice opinion via hashpower.
2) This pool should openly and aggressively support larger blocks. Bitcoin Unlimited specifically. Peter R has some comments on details. I propose it be forked from Core (too much personal-brand liability on XT).
3) The pool would accept financial support from businesses, maybe large holders, VCs, etc, and therefore hopefully be able to offer 0% fees or even overlay payouts to miners. This would organically attract hashpower to the pool, in addition to whatever hashpower would do it purely for the vision (all of us in this thread?).
4) To alleviate fears of the pool gaining >50% hashpower, perhaps the charter should contain a clause that if it holds >30% hashpower for more than 1 month, it must split into two completely separate entities, with zero management overlap.
5) A lot of us have been saying for a while that eventually non-profit pools would exist....blocksize seems the perfect catalyst to drive initial support.
6) But this entity should be built for the long-term, with more than the hopefully-temporary issue of blocksize in mind. So how should this be chartered specifically for the health and growth of the ecosystem overall in mind, over the long-term?
If anyone thinks this idea has legs, let's work out some details. Peter suggested putting together a short doc as an outline of the project, and presenting it to various businesses and individuals to get a sense for how well it would be received and whether it makes sense to pursue it more seriously.