"On March 11, 2013, Bitcoin experienced a technical crisis. Versions 0.7 and 0.8 of the software diverged from each other in behavior due to a bug, causing the block chain to “fork” into two.
The optimal course of action (and, in retrospect, the only one that avoided serious risks to the system) was first proposed and justified 16 minutes later, and the developers reached consensus on it a mere 20–25 minutes after that. Shortly thereafter — barely an hour after the discovery of the fork — the crisis response had effectively and successfully concluded.
Without the central co-ordination of the Bitcoin Core developers and the strong trust that the community places in them, it is inconceivable that adopting this counterintuitive solution could have been successfully accomplished."
[1] https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-...