After studying the issues I believe that the situation warrants a
short-term modest blockchain increase.  Somewhere between 2mb-5mb, whatever
the community will swallow.  I recommend that happen before the winter
shopping rush.

Then, because of the fundamental technical limitations of scaling, a new
system needs to be adopted for fast transactions.  To maintain momentum
etc., the new system ultimately settles with traditional bitcoins.

In order to keep the existing brand momentum, network, and business
investment, I believe the smoothest path forward is to build a new,
additional system re-using the bitcoin name.  I suggest this new system
come packaged with the bitcoin core client and be referred to as
QuickBitcoin or qbtc or something similar.  As far as the public is
concerned it could simply continue to be called bitcoin.  The system will
work on top of traditional bitcoins but have a mechanism for more/faster
transactions.  Exactly what mechanism doesn't have to be perfect, it just
needs to be reasonably secure/useful and something that the community will
accept.

I believe this is the best way to scale bitcoin while maintaining the
strength of its existing network,  community, and branding.