> How many hardforks has the core bitcoin project seen in the last five years?
Can you elaborate on this - why would the core project care how many times it's forked? The forks shouldn't affect the core project at all, that's the whole point of having a fork in the first place. Or alternatively, if you like and use the fork, then you aren't on the core bitcoin chain anymore. Either way the main BTC chain doesn't care.
>why would the core project care how many times it's forked?
Some changes (eg. to the block reward schedule) are only possible on a hard fork as it makes the main chain incompatible with the pre-fork chain.
That's the philosophical difference between the projects: ETH is not afraid of hard forks and to this date, they have been uncontested. BTC never considers a hard fork and has had at least two major contested ones.
Do you have some technical definition for "contested" or are you using it as a generic term to describe how the forks were perceived by the rest of the community?
Well, of course I forgot the ETC HF, that one was indeed contested. But yeah, generic for a HF out of differences that cannot be reconciled and which leads to a viable new project like BCash, BSV, ETC.
Can you elaborate on this - why would the core project care how many times it's forked? The forks shouldn't affect the core project at all, that's the whole point of having a fork in the first place. Or alternatively, if you like and use the fork, then you aren't on the core bitcoin chain anymore. Either way the main BTC chain doesn't care.