As a result of all through 2012-2015, after Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared, “no hard-forking upgrades” turned a de facto social rule of the Bitcoin community (BTC) so outdated non-upgraded nodes will not develop into stranded on upgrades.
This is the reason SegWit was the one attainable technique to enhance TPS capability with out breaking UTXO view for outdated nodes (additional enhance through soft-forking would solely be attainable by way of extension blocks, which would break UTXO view for outdated nodes).
The opposite de facto social rule is that node working ought to be as extensively accessible as attainable. Due to will increase in bandwidth and propagation tech corresponding to compact block relay block measurement restrict could possibly be larger with out a lot danger of pool centralization (8 MB ought to be manageable as we speak and would not 8x the danger of centralization). Nevertheless, it will imply that bandwidth-limited nodes could not sustain or would take too lengthy for preliminary block obtain.
The Bitcoin community saved the restrict low because of this as effectively, and present stewardship of the mission maintains that call.
Bitcoin code is free open-source (MIT license) and anybody can fork the code and alter the restrict for himself.
Nevertheless, he cannot pressure others to simply accept the modified guidelines by working such software program.
What occurs if he manages to persuade solely a subset of the community to run patched node software program?
A everlasting arduous fork, after which the forked community has to persuade the social / markets layer to offer it worth, and use the worth to bid for mining hashes.
We’ve got seen this play out with important forks of Bitcoin.
See additionally right here for a short historical past of the blocksize restrict, and right here and right here for a timeline of occasions that led to the primary everlasting fork of Bitcoin.
Be aware that “Nakamoto Consensus” would not resolve which blockchain wins the branding / ticker. It’s market & social forces which map blockchains to acknowledged currencies.