Original author: Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum
Original translation: Cat brother, Wu talks about blockchain
Recently, I finished reading (or rather, listening to) two major historical books that documented the great Bitcoin block size war of the 2010s. These two books represent two opposing viewpoints:
Jonathan Bier's "The Blocksize War", tells the story from the perspective of supporting small blocks
Roger Ver and Steve Patterson's "Hijacking Bitcoin," tells the story from the perspective of supporting big blocks.
It was fascinating to read these two history books documenting events that I had personally experienced and participated in to some extent. While I was well aware of the long events that took place and the narrative of the nature of the Hedging on both sides, there were some interesting details that I didn't know or completely forgotten, and it was interesting to look at them with new eyes. At the time, I was a "big block" person, but I was a pragmatic mid-block against extreme rising or absolutizing statements that fees should never rise significantly. So do I still support that point of view now? I'm looking forward to seeing and finding out.
In Jonathan Bier's account, how does Small Block Party view the block size war?
The initial debate of the block size war revolved around a simple question: Should Bitcoin increase the block size limit from 1 MB at that time through a hard fork to allow for more transactions, thereby reducing fees, but at the cost of making the operation and validation of nodes in the blockchain network more difficult and expensive?
"If the block size is much larger, you will need a large data center to run the node, and you will not be able to run it anonymously." - This is a key argument raised in a video sponsored by Peter Todd, advocating for keeping the block size small.
Bier's book strikes me that while the small block faction does care about this specific problem, tending to conservatively increase the Block size just a little bit to ensure that running Nodes is still easy, they are more concerned with how the protocol level issues determine this higher-level problem. In their opinion, protocol changes (especially "Hard Fork") should be very rare and require a high level of Consensus protocol users.
Bitcoin does not attempt to compete with payment processors - there are already many of those. Instead, Bitcoin aims to be something more unique and special: a completely new form of currency, free from control by central organizations and central banks. If Bitcoin were to have a highly active governance structure (which is necessary for controversial adjustments to block size parameters) or become easily manipulated and controlled by miners, exchanges, or other large companies, it would forever lose this valuable unique advantage.
In Bier's narrative, the biggest discomfort caused by the big block faction to the small block faction is precisely because they often try to gather a relatively small number of big players together to legitimize and promote changes that they prefer, which is completely contrary to the small block faction's views on governance.
The New York protocol was signed in 2017 by major Bitcoin exchange, payment processors, Miner and other companies. Block makers see this as a key example of trying to transform Bitcoin from user domination to conglomerate domination.
In Roger Ver's narrative, how do the big block camp view the block size war?
Large block advocates often focus on one key specific issue: what should Bitcoin be? Should it be a store of value - digital gold, or a means of payment - digital cash? For them, it was clear from the beginning that the original vision and the vision recognized by all large block advocates is digital cash. This is even explicitly mentioned in the White Paper!
The big block faction also often refers to two other works by Satoshi Nakamoto:
The simplified payment verification section in the White Paper discusses how individual users can use Merkle proofs to verify whether their payments are included, without needing to validate the entire chain, when the blockchain becomes very large.
A passage on Bitcointalk advocating for gradually increasing block size through hard forks:
For them, the transition from following digital cash to digital gold is a turning point, which was agreed upon by a small and closely-knit group of core developers. Then they believed that, since they had discussed and come to a conclusion internally, they had the right to impose their views on the entire project.
The Block did come up with a solution that Bitcoin could act as both cash and gold – i.e., Bitcoin become a "first layer" focused on being gold, and a "second layer" protocol built on top of Bitcoin, such as Lighting Network, providing cheap payments for each transaction without the need to use Blockchain. However, these solutions fall far short in practice, and Ver devotes several chapters to in-depth criticism of them. For example, even if everyone switches to the Lighting Network, they will eventually need to increase the block size to accommodate hundreds of millions of users. In addition, trustless receiving of coins in the Lighting Network requires an online Node, and to ensure that your coins are not stolen, the chain needs to be checked once a week. These complexities, Ver believes, will inevitably drive users to interact with the Lighting Network in a centralized way.
What is the key difference in their viewpoints?
Ver's description of the specific debate is consistent with that of the Small Block Faction: both sides agree that the Small Block Faction places more emphasis on the ease of running nodes, while the Big Block Faction places more emphasis on low transaction costs. They both acknowledge that the key factor leading to the debate is the reasonable difference in beliefs.
But Bier and Ver have very different descriptions of the deeper issues. For Bier, the small block faction represents users who oppose a small but powerful group of miners and exchange conglomerates trying to control the blockchain network for their own benefit. Small blocks ensure that ordinary users can run nodes and validate the blockchain network, keeping Bitcoin decentralized. For Ver, the big block faction represents users who oppose a small but self-proclaimed high-ranking clergy and venture-backed companies (i.e., Blockstream) that profit from the second layer solutions required by the small block roadmap. Big blocks ensure that users can continue to afford on-chain transaction fees without relying on centralized second layer infrastructure, keeping Bitcoin decentralized.
The closest point of agreement between the two sides in the 'debate clause' that I saw is that Bier's book acknowledges that many big-block factions are well-intentioned, and even acknowledges their reasonable dissatisfaction with forum moderators who support small blocks but block opposing views. However, he frequently criticizes the incompetence of the big-block factions, while Ver's book tends to attribute malicious intentions and even conspiracy theories to the small-block factions, but rarely criticizes their abilities. This reflects a common political metaphor that I have heard on many occasions, namely 'the right wing thinks the left wing is naive, while the left wing thinks the right wing is evil'.
How do I view the Block size war? How do I view it now?
Room 77, a restaurant in Berlin that once accepted Bitcoin payments, was at the heart of the Bitcoin community, with many restaurants accepting Bitcoin here. Unfortunately, the dream of Bitcoin payments gradually faded in the second half of the decade, and I believe the continuously rising transaction fees are a key reason.
When I personally experienced the Bitcoin block size war, I usually stood on the side of the big block camp. My support for the big block camp is focused on several key points:
· One key original intention of Bitcoin is Digital Cash, and high transaction fees may stifle this use case. Although second-layer protocols theoretically can provide lower fees, the entire concept has not been sufficiently tested. It is very irresponsible for Small Block Faction to insist on the small block roadmap when they know so little about the actual effect of the Lighting Network. Now, the actual usage experience of the Lighting Network has made pessimistic views more common.
· I'm not convinced by the "meta-level" argument of small blocks. Small Block factions often claim that "Bitcoin should be controlled by users" and that "users do not support large blocks", but they have never been willing to clearly define who "users" are or how to measure users' willingness. The big Block Party implicitly proposes at least three different ways to calculate users: Computing Power, public statements by well-known companies, and social media discussions, while the Small Block Party rejects each way. The Block faction organized the New York protocol not because they liked the "group", but because the Block insisted that any controversial change required Consensus between "users", and signing a declaration of key stakeholders was the only practical way for the Block faction to believe.
· SegWit is a proposal adopted by the small block faction to slightly increase the block size, which is unnecessarily complex compared to a simple hard fork to increase the Block size. The petty Block eventually developed the "Soft Fork good, Hard Fork bad" credo (which I strongly disagree with) and devised their Block size increase scheme to fit this rule, although Bier acknowledges that this poses so serious complexity that the long Block are unable to understand the proposal. I feel like small Block factions aren't just "cautious", they are arbitrarily choosing between different types of caution, choosing one (no hard fork) at the expense of the other (keeping the code and spec clean and clear) because it fits their agenda. Eventually, the big Block faction also abandoned "brevity and clarity" in favor of ideas such as Bitcoin Unlimited's adaptive Block size increase, which Bier (rightfully did) harshly criticized.
· The small block faction is indeed conducting very uncool social media censorship to impose their views, ultimately leading to Theymos' infamous statement: 'If 90% of /r/Bitcoin users think these policies are unacceptable, then I hope these 90% of /r/Bitcoin users leave.' ps: '/r/' represents a subreddit on Reddit.
Even relatively modest posts in favor of large blocks are often deleted. Custom CSS is used to make these deleted posts invisible.
Ver's book focuses on points 1 and 4, as well as part of point 3, while also proposing some theories of misconduct related to financial motivation – that the Block faction founded a company called Blockstream that would build a second layer of protocol on top of the Bitcoin while advocating the idea Bitcoin that the first layer should remain restricted, thus making a second layer network for these businesses necessary. Ver doesn't pay much attention to the philosophy of how Bitcoin should be governed, because for him, the answer "Bitcoin is governed by Miners" is satisfactory. I disagree with neither the small Block nor the Big Block on this, and I think that the vague "we reject the actual defined user Consensus" and the extreme "Miners should control everything because they have consistent incentives" are both unreasonable.
At the same time, I remember the extreme disappointment with the big block faction on some key points, and these views also resonate in Bier's book. The worst thing (both Bier and I think) is that the big Block faction has never been willing to agree to any realistic Block size limiting principle. A common view is that "the size of the Block is determined by the market" – this means that Miner should decide the size of the Block according to their own wishes, and other Miner can choose to accept or reject these Block. I strongly disagree with this and point out that this mechanism is an extreme distortion of the concept of "market". Eventually, when the big block split into their own independent chain (Bitcoin Cash), they eventually abandoned this view and set a Block size limit of 32 MB.
At the time, I actually had a principled approach to determining the block size limit. Quoting from my 2018 post:
"Bitcoin maximizes the predictability of the cost of reading the blockchain, while minimizing the predictability of the cost of writing to the blockchain, resulting in excellent performance on the former metric and catastrophic performance on the latter. Ethereum's current governance model achieves a moderate predictability between the two."
I reiterated this point in a tweet in 2022. Essentially, the philosophy is that we should strike a balance between increasing the cost of writing to the chain (i.e., transaction fees) and the cost of reading the chain (i.e., software requirements for nodes). Ideally, if the demand for using blockchain increases by 100 times, we should share the pain by increasing the block size by 10 times and the fees by 10 times (the demand elasticity of transaction fees is close to 1, so this is basically feasible in practice).
Ethereum has actually adopted a medium-sized block approach: since its launch in 2015, the chain's capacity has increased by about 5.3 times (possibly 7 times if including calldata repricing and blob), while fees have increased from almost nothing to a significant but not too high level.
However, this eclectic-oriented (or "concave") approach has never been accepted by any school; It may feel too "centrally planned" for one party and too "vague" for the other. I think the fault of the big Block faction here is greater than that of the small Block faction; Small Block factions were initially willing to increase the Block size modestly (e.g., Adam Back's 2/4/8 plan), but large Block factions were unwilling to compromise and quickly moved from advocating a single increase to a specific larger value to a general philosophy that almost any non-trivial limit on Block size was illegal.
The big block faction has also begun to advocate that miners should control Bitcoin - Bier effectively criticized this philosophy, pointing out that if miners try to modify protocol rules to do other things instead of increasing block size, such as giving themselves more rewards, they may quickly abandon their views.
One of the main criticisms of the big Block faction in Bier's book is their repeated incompetence. The Bitcoin Classic code is poorly written, Bitcoin Unlimited is unnecessarily complicated, for a long time they didn't include erasure protection, and don't seem to understand that this choice greatly diminishes their chances of success (!!). ), and they have serious security vulnerabilities. They clamored about the need for long Bitcoin software implementations — a principle I agree with, and Ethereum have adopted this principle — but their "optional client" is really just a branch of the Bitcoin core, changing a few lines of code to increase the size of the Block. In Bier's narrative, their repeated blunders in code and economics have led to the departure of increasingly long proponents over time. Major big Block supporters believe Craig Wright falsely claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, which further discredits them.
Craig Wright, a fraudster who impersonates Satoshi Nakamoto. He often uses legal threats to take down criticism, which is why MyFork is the largest online copy in the Cult of Craig repository, which documents the evidence of his fraud. Unfortunately, many big blocks have fallen for Craig because he caters to their claims and says what the big block camp wants to hear.
Overall, by reading these two books, I found myself more often agreeing with Ver's views on macro issues, but more often agreeing with Bier's views on specific details. In my opinion, the big block camp is right on the central issue, that is, blocks need to be larger, preferably achieved through a simple and clean hard fork as described by Satoshi Nakamoto. However, the small block camp makes fewer embarrassing mistakes in terms of technology, and their position leads to fewer cases of absurd results.
The block size debate is a one-sided capacity trap.
By reading these two books, my overall impression is a kind of political tragedy, which I think is not uncommon in various contexts, including cryptocurrency, companies, and national politics:
One side monopolizes all capable people, but uses its power to promote narrow and biased views; the other side correctly recognizes the problem, but is immersed in the focus of opposition and fails to develop the technical ability to implement its own plans.
In the case of Xu long, the first group is criticized for authoritarianism, but when you ask its (often long) supporters why they support it, their answer is that the other side only complains; If they do come to power, they will be completely defeated in a matter of days.
In a way, this is not the fault of the opposition: there is no platform to execute and gain experience, and it is difficult to become good at execution. But what is particularly evident in the Block Size debate is that the big Block faction doesn't seem to realize the need for execution competence at all—they think they can win just by being right on the Block size issue. Block factions ended up paying a heavy price for their focus on opposition rather than building: even as they forked into their own chain (Bitcoin Cash), they split two more times in a short period of time until the community finally stabilized.
I call this problem a one-sided capability trap. This seems to be the fundamental problem facing anyone trying to build a political entity, project, or community that they hope will be democratic or longing. Satoshi people want to work with other Satoshi people. If two different groups are roughly evenly matched, people will tend to choose the side that is more in line with their values, and the balance can be stable. But if this tendency is too one-sided, it enters a different equilibrium and seems to be difficult to recover. To some extent, the opposition can mitigate the one-sided capability trap by being aware of the existence of the problem and consciously cultivating capacity. As a rule, opposition movements do not even reach this step. But sometimes it's not enough to be aware of the problem. We would benefit greatly if there were stronger, deeper ways to prevent and get out of the unilateral capability trap.
Less conflict, more technology
There is one glaring omission in these two books that is more pronounced than anything else: the word 'ZK-SNARK' does not appear at all in these two books. There is almost no excuse for this: even by the mid-2010s, ZK-SNARKs and their potential for scalability (and privacy) were well known. Zcash was launched in October 2016. Gregory Maxwell briefly discussed the scalability implications of ZK-SNARKs in 2013, but they seem to have been completely left out of the discussion for Bitcoin's future roadmap.
The ultimate way to ease political tension is not compromise, but new technology: finding entirely new ways that can bring more of what both sides want at the same time. We have seen several instances of this in Ethereum. A few examples that come to mind are:
· Justin Drake promotes the adoption of BLS aggregation, which allows Ethereum's Proof of Stake to handle more validators, thereby reducing the minimum staking balance from 1500 to 32, with almost no drawbacks. Recently, progress in signature aggregation is expected to further drive this point.
· EIP-7702 has achieved the goal of ERC-3074 in a way that is significantly more compatible with smart contract wallets, helping to alleviate long-standing disputes.
· Multidimensional Gas, starting with its implementation on the blob, has helped increase Ethereum's capacity to accommodate rollup data without increasing the worst-case block size, thereby minimizing security risks.
When an ecosystem stops embracing new technologies, it inevitably stagnates and becomes more contentious at the same time: political debates about "I long get 10 apples" and "long you get 10 apples" are inherently less long contentious than debates about "I give up 10 apples" and "you give up 10 apples" that cause less contention. The loss is more painful than the gain, and people are more willing to break their common political rules to avoid losses. This is a key reason why I'm so upset about de-rise and the idea that "we can't solve social problems with technology": there are fairly good reasons to believe that it is indeed better for social harmony to compete over who has more long, rather than who has less to lose.
In economic theory, these two prisoner's dilemmas are indistinguishable: the game on the right can be seen as the game on the left plus an independent (irrelevant) step, in which, no matter how the players act, they will lose four points. But in psychology, these two games may be very different.
One key question for the future of Bitcoin is whether it can become a technologically forward-looking ecosystem. The development of Inions and later BitVM has created new possibilities for the second layer, improving what Lightning can do. Hopefully, Udi Wertheimer's theory is correct, that an ETH ETF would mean the end of Saylorism and a recognition that Bitcoin needs technological improvements.
Why do I care about this issue?
I care about analyzing the success and failure of Bitcoin, not to belittle Bitcoin and elevate Ethereum. In fact, as someone who enjoys understanding social and political issues, I think one characteristic of Bitcoin is its sufficient complexity in sociology, giving rise to such rich and interesting internal debates and divisions that two whole books could be written to discuss them. Instead, I care about analyzing these issues because Ethereum and other digital (even physical) communities I care about can learn a lot from understanding what has happened, what has been done well, and what can be done better.
Ethereum's focus on client diversity stems from observing the failure caused by Bitcoin having only one client team. The version of its second-layer solution comes from understanding how Bitcoin's limitations result in limitations on building second-layer solutions with certain trust attributes. More broadly, Ethereum explicitly seeks to cultivate a diverse ecosystem largely to avoid the trap of unilateral capability.
Another example that comes to mind is the concept of network-state movement. Network-states are a new digital separation strategy that allows communities with similar values to break free from the constraints of mainstream society to some extent, and to build their vision of cultural and technological future. However, the experience of Bitcoin Cash (after the fork) suggests that movements attempting to solve problems through forking have a common pattern of failure: they may continue to split, never truly cooperating. The lessons from the experience of Bitcoin Cash go far beyond Bitcoin Cash itself. Like rebellious cryptocurrencies, rebellious network-states need to learn how to actually execute and build, rather than just throwing parties, sharing vibes, and comparing modern barbarism on Twitter with 16th-century European architecture. Zuzalu is in some ways a part of my own attempt to drive this change.
I recommend reading Bier's The Blocksize War and Patterson and Ver's Hijacking Bitcoin to understand a defining moment in Bitcoin's history. In particular, I recommend reading both books with a mindset that doesn't just focus on Bitcoin – instead, the first truly high-stakes civil war of the "digital nation," lessons that offer important lessons for the other digital nations we will be building in the coming decades.
The content is for reference only, not a solicitation or offer. No investment, tax, or legal advice provided. See Disclaimer for more risks disclosure.
Vitalik's New Article: Reflections on the Bitcoin Block Size War
Original author: Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum
Original translation: Cat brother, Wu talks about blockchain
Recently, I finished reading (or rather, listening to) two major historical books that documented the great Bitcoin block size war of the 2010s. These two books represent two opposing viewpoints:
It was fascinating to read these two history books documenting events that I had personally experienced and participated in to some extent. While I was well aware of the long events that took place and the narrative of the nature of the Hedging on both sides, there were some interesting details that I didn't know or completely forgotten, and it was interesting to look at them with new eyes. At the time, I was a "big block" person, but I was a pragmatic mid-block against extreme rising or absolutizing statements that fees should never rise significantly. So do I still support that point of view now? I'm looking forward to seeing and finding out.
In Jonathan Bier's account, how does Small Block Party view the block size war?
The initial debate of the block size war revolved around a simple question: Should Bitcoin increase the block size limit from 1 MB at that time through a hard fork to allow for more transactions, thereby reducing fees, but at the cost of making the operation and validation of nodes in the blockchain network more difficult and expensive?
"If the block size is much larger, you will need a large data center to run the node, and you will not be able to run it anonymously." - This is a key argument raised in a video sponsored by Peter Todd, advocating for keeping the block size small.
Bier's book strikes me that while the small block faction does care about this specific problem, tending to conservatively increase the Block size just a little bit to ensure that running Nodes is still easy, they are more concerned with how the protocol level issues determine this higher-level problem. In their opinion, protocol changes (especially "Hard Fork") should be very rare and require a high level of Consensus protocol users.
Bitcoin does not attempt to compete with payment processors - there are already many of those. Instead, Bitcoin aims to be something more unique and special: a completely new form of currency, free from control by central organizations and central banks. If Bitcoin were to have a highly active governance structure (which is necessary for controversial adjustments to block size parameters) or become easily manipulated and controlled by miners, exchanges, or other large companies, it would forever lose this valuable unique advantage.
In Bier's narrative, the biggest discomfort caused by the big block faction to the small block faction is precisely because they often try to gather a relatively small number of big players together to legitimize and promote changes that they prefer, which is completely contrary to the small block faction's views on governance.
The New York protocol was signed in 2017 by major Bitcoin exchange, payment processors, Miner and other companies. Block makers see this as a key example of trying to transform Bitcoin from user domination to conglomerate domination.
In Roger Ver's narrative, how do the big block camp view the block size war?
Large block advocates often focus on one key specific issue: what should Bitcoin be? Should it be a store of value - digital gold, or a means of payment - digital cash? For them, it was clear from the beginning that the original vision and the vision recognized by all large block advocates is digital cash. This is even explicitly mentioned in the White Paper!
The big block faction also often refers to two other works by Satoshi Nakamoto:
The simplified payment verification section in the White Paper discusses how individual users can use Merkle proofs to verify whether their payments are included, without needing to validate the entire chain, when the blockchain becomes very large.
A passage on Bitcointalk advocating for gradually increasing block size through hard forks:
For them, the transition from following digital cash to digital gold is a turning point, which was agreed upon by a small and closely-knit group of core developers. Then they believed that, since they had discussed and come to a conclusion internally, they had the right to impose their views on the entire project.
The Block did come up with a solution that Bitcoin could act as both cash and gold – i.e., Bitcoin become a "first layer" focused on being gold, and a "second layer" protocol built on top of Bitcoin, such as Lighting Network, providing cheap payments for each transaction without the need to use Blockchain. However, these solutions fall far short in practice, and Ver devotes several chapters to in-depth criticism of them. For example, even if everyone switches to the Lighting Network, they will eventually need to increase the block size to accommodate hundreds of millions of users. In addition, trustless receiving of coins in the Lighting Network requires an online Node, and to ensure that your coins are not stolen, the chain needs to be checked once a week. These complexities, Ver believes, will inevitably drive users to interact with the Lighting Network in a centralized way.
What is the key difference in their viewpoints?
Ver's description of the specific debate is consistent with that of the Small Block Faction: both sides agree that the Small Block Faction places more emphasis on the ease of running nodes, while the Big Block Faction places more emphasis on low transaction costs. They both acknowledge that the key factor leading to the debate is the reasonable difference in beliefs.
But Bier and Ver have very different descriptions of the deeper issues. For Bier, the small block faction represents users who oppose a small but powerful group of miners and exchange conglomerates trying to control the blockchain network for their own benefit. Small blocks ensure that ordinary users can run nodes and validate the blockchain network, keeping Bitcoin decentralized. For Ver, the big block faction represents users who oppose a small but self-proclaimed high-ranking clergy and venture-backed companies (i.e., Blockstream) that profit from the second layer solutions required by the small block roadmap. Big blocks ensure that users can continue to afford on-chain transaction fees without relying on centralized second layer infrastructure, keeping Bitcoin decentralized.
The closest point of agreement between the two sides in the 'debate clause' that I saw is that Bier's book acknowledges that many big-block factions are well-intentioned, and even acknowledges their reasonable dissatisfaction with forum moderators who support small blocks but block opposing views. However, he frequently criticizes the incompetence of the big-block factions, while Ver's book tends to attribute malicious intentions and even conspiracy theories to the small-block factions, but rarely criticizes their abilities. This reflects a common political metaphor that I have heard on many occasions, namely 'the right wing thinks the left wing is naive, while the left wing thinks the right wing is evil'.
How do I view the Block size war? How do I view it now?
Room 77, a restaurant in Berlin that once accepted Bitcoin payments, was at the heart of the Bitcoin community, with many restaurants accepting Bitcoin here. Unfortunately, the dream of Bitcoin payments gradually faded in the second half of the decade, and I believe the continuously rising transaction fees are a key reason.
When I personally experienced the Bitcoin block size war, I usually stood on the side of the big block camp. My support for the big block camp is focused on several key points:
· One key original intention of Bitcoin is Digital Cash, and high transaction fees may stifle this use case. Although second-layer protocols theoretically can provide lower fees, the entire concept has not been sufficiently tested. It is very irresponsible for Small Block Faction to insist on the small block roadmap when they know so little about the actual effect of the Lighting Network. Now, the actual usage experience of the Lighting Network has made pessimistic views more common.
· I'm not convinced by the "meta-level" argument of small blocks. Small Block factions often claim that "Bitcoin should be controlled by users" and that "users do not support large blocks", but they have never been willing to clearly define who "users" are or how to measure users' willingness. The big Block Party implicitly proposes at least three different ways to calculate users: Computing Power, public statements by well-known companies, and social media discussions, while the Small Block Party rejects each way. The Block faction organized the New York protocol not because they liked the "group", but because the Block insisted that any controversial change required Consensus between "users", and signing a declaration of key stakeholders was the only practical way for the Block faction to believe.
· SegWit is a proposal adopted by the small block faction to slightly increase the block size, which is unnecessarily complex compared to a simple hard fork to increase the Block size. The petty Block eventually developed the "Soft Fork good, Hard Fork bad" credo (which I strongly disagree with) and devised their Block size increase scheme to fit this rule, although Bier acknowledges that this poses so serious complexity that the long Block are unable to understand the proposal. I feel like small Block factions aren't just "cautious", they are arbitrarily choosing between different types of caution, choosing one (no hard fork) at the expense of the other (keeping the code and spec clean and clear) because it fits their agenda. Eventually, the big Block faction also abandoned "brevity and clarity" in favor of ideas such as Bitcoin Unlimited's adaptive Block size increase, which Bier (rightfully did) harshly criticized.
· The small block faction is indeed conducting very uncool social media censorship to impose their views, ultimately leading to Theymos' infamous statement: 'If 90% of /r/Bitcoin users think these policies are unacceptable, then I hope these 90% of /r/Bitcoin users leave.' ps: '/r/' represents a subreddit on Reddit.
Even relatively modest posts in favor of large blocks are often deleted. Custom CSS is used to make these deleted posts invisible.
Ver's book focuses on points 1 and 4, as well as part of point 3, while also proposing some theories of misconduct related to financial motivation – that the Block faction founded a company called Blockstream that would build a second layer of protocol on top of the Bitcoin while advocating the idea Bitcoin that the first layer should remain restricted, thus making a second layer network for these businesses necessary. Ver doesn't pay much attention to the philosophy of how Bitcoin should be governed, because for him, the answer "Bitcoin is governed by Miners" is satisfactory. I disagree with neither the small Block nor the Big Block on this, and I think that the vague "we reject the actual defined user Consensus" and the extreme "Miners should control everything because they have consistent incentives" are both unreasonable.
At the same time, I remember the extreme disappointment with the big block faction on some key points, and these views also resonate in Bier's book. The worst thing (both Bier and I think) is that the big Block faction has never been willing to agree to any realistic Block size limiting principle. A common view is that "the size of the Block is determined by the market" – this means that Miner should decide the size of the Block according to their own wishes, and other Miner can choose to accept or reject these Block. I strongly disagree with this and point out that this mechanism is an extreme distortion of the concept of "market". Eventually, when the big block split into their own independent chain (Bitcoin Cash), they eventually abandoned this view and set a Block size limit of 32 MB.
At the time, I actually had a principled approach to determining the block size limit. Quoting from my 2018 post:
"Bitcoin maximizes the predictability of the cost of reading the blockchain, while minimizing the predictability of the cost of writing to the blockchain, resulting in excellent performance on the former metric and catastrophic performance on the latter. Ethereum's current governance model achieves a moderate predictability between the two."
I reiterated this point in a tweet in 2022. Essentially, the philosophy is that we should strike a balance between increasing the cost of writing to the chain (i.e., transaction fees) and the cost of reading the chain (i.e., software requirements for nodes). Ideally, if the demand for using blockchain increases by 100 times, we should share the pain by increasing the block size by 10 times and the fees by 10 times (the demand elasticity of transaction fees is close to 1, so this is basically feasible in practice).
Ethereum has actually adopted a medium-sized block approach: since its launch in 2015, the chain's capacity has increased by about 5.3 times (possibly 7 times if including calldata repricing and blob), while fees have increased from almost nothing to a significant but not too high level.
However, this eclectic-oriented (or "concave") approach has never been accepted by any school; It may feel too "centrally planned" for one party and too "vague" for the other. I think the fault of the big Block faction here is greater than that of the small Block faction; Small Block factions were initially willing to increase the Block size modestly (e.g., Adam Back's 2/4/8 plan), but large Block factions were unwilling to compromise and quickly moved from advocating a single increase to a specific larger value to a general philosophy that almost any non-trivial limit on Block size was illegal.
The big block faction has also begun to advocate that miners should control Bitcoin - Bier effectively criticized this philosophy, pointing out that if miners try to modify protocol rules to do other things instead of increasing block size, such as giving themselves more rewards, they may quickly abandon their views.
One of the main criticisms of the big Block faction in Bier's book is their repeated incompetence. The Bitcoin Classic code is poorly written, Bitcoin Unlimited is unnecessarily complicated, for a long time they didn't include erasure protection, and don't seem to understand that this choice greatly diminishes their chances of success (!!). ), and they have serious security vulnerabilities. They clamored about the need for long Bitcoin software implementations — a principle I agree with, and Ethereum have adopted this principle — but their "optional client" is really just a branch of the Bitcoin core, changing a few lines of code to increase the size of the Block. In Bier's narrative, their repeated blunders in code and economics have led to the departure of increasingly long proponents over time. Major big Block supporters believe Craig Wright falsely claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, which further discredits them.
Craig Wright, a fraudster who impersonates Satoshi Nakamoto. He often uses legal threats to take down criticism, which is why MyFork is the largest online copy in the Cult of Craig repository, which documents the evidence of his fraud. Unfortunately, many big blocks have fallen for Craig because he caters to their claims and says what the big block camp wants to hear.
Overall, by reading these two books, I found myself more often agreeing with Ver's views on macro issues, but more often agreeing with Bier's views on specific details. In my opinion, the big block camp is right on the central issue, that is, blocks need to be larger, preferably achieved through a simple and clean hard fork as described by Satoshi Nakamoto. However, the small block camp makes fewer embarrassing mistakes in terms of technology, and their position leads to fewer cases of absurd results.
The block size debate is a one-sided capacity trap.
By reading these two books, my overall impression is a kind of political tragedy, which I think is not uncommon in various contexts, including cryptocurrency, companies, and national politics:
One side monopolizes all capable people, but uses its power to promote narrow and biased views; the other side correctly recognizes the problem, but is immersed in the focus of opposition and fails to develop the technical ability to implement its own plans.
In the case of Xu long, the first group is criticized for authoritarianism, but when you ask its (often long) supporters why they support it, their answer is that the other side only complains; If they do come to power, they will be completely defeated in a matter of days.
In a way, this is not the fault of the opposition: there is no platform to execute and gain experience, and it is difficult to become good at execution. But what is particularly evident in the Block Size debate is that the big Block faction doesn't seem to realize the need for execution competence at all—they think they can win just by being right on the Block size issue. Block factions ended up paying a heavy price for their focus on opposition rather than building: even as they forked into their own chain (Bitcoin Cash), they split two more times in a short period of time until the community finally stabilized.
I call this problem a one-sided capability trap. This seems to be the fundamental problem facing anyone trying to build a political entity, project, or community that they hope will be democratic or longing. Satoshi people want to work with other Satoshi people. If two different groups are roughly evenly matched, people will tend to choose the side that is more in line with their values, and the balance can be stable. But if this tendency is too one-sided, it enters a different equilibrium and seems to be difficult to recover. To some extent, the opposition can mitigate the one-sided capability trap by being aware of the existence of the problem and consciously cultivating capacity. As a rule, opposition movements do not even reach this step. But sometimes it's not enough to be aware of the problem. We would benefit greatly if there were stronger, deeper ways to prevent and get out of the unilateral capability trap.
Less conflict, more technology
There is one glaring omission in these two books that is more pronounced than anything else: the word 'ZK-SNARK' does not appear at all in these two books. There is almost no excuse for this: even by the mid-2010s, ZK-SNARKs and their potential for scalability (and privacy) were well known. Zcash was launched in October 2016. Gregory Maxwell briefly discussed the scalability implications of ZK-SNARKs in 2013, but they seem to have been completely left out of the discussion for Bitcoin's future roadmap.
The ultimate way to ease political tension is not compromise, but new technology: finding entirely new ways that can bring more of what both sides want at the same time. We have seen several instances of this in Ethereum. A few examples that come to mind are:
· Justin Drake promotes the adoption of BLS aggregation, which allows Ethereum's Proof of Stake to handle more validators, thereby reducing the minimum staking balance from 1500 to 32, with almost no drawbacks. Recently, progress in signature aggregation is expected to further drive this point.
· EIP-7702 has achieved the goal of ERC-3074 in a way that is significantly more compatible with smart contract wallets, helping to alleviate long-standing disputes.
· Multidimensional Gas, starting with its implementation on the blob, has helped increase Ethereum's capacity to accommodate rollup data without increasing the worst-case block size, thereby minimizing security risks.
When an ecosystem stops embracing new technologies, it inevitably stagnates and becomes more contentious at the same time: political debates about "I long get 10 apples" and "long you get 10 apples" are inherently less long contentious than debates about "I give up 10 apples" and "you give up 10 apples" that cause less contention. The loss is more painful than the gain, and people are more willing to break their common political rules to avoid losses. This is a key reason why I'm so upset about de-rise and the idea that "we can't solve social problems with technology": there are fairly good reasons to believe that it is indeed better for social harmony to compete over who has more long, rather than who has less to lose.
In economic theory, these two prisoner's dilemmas are indistinguishable: the game on the right can be seen as the game on the left plus an independent (irrelevant) step, in which, no matter how the players act, they will lose four points. But in psychology, these two games may be very different.
One key question for the future of Bitcoin is whether it can become a technologically forward-looking ecosystem. The development of Inions and later BitVM has created new possibilities for the second layer, improving what Lightning can do. Hopefully, Udi Wertheimer's theory is correct, that an ETH ETF would mean the end of Saylorism and a recognition that Bitcoin needs technological improvements.
Why do I care about this issue?
I care about analyzing the success and failure of Bitcoin, not to belittle Bitcoin and elevate Ethereum. In fact, as someone who enjoys understanding social and political issues, I think one characteristic of Bitcoin is its sufficient complexity in sociology, giving rise to such rich and interesting internal debates and divisions that two whole books could be written to discuss them. Instead, I care about analyzing these issues because Ethereum and other digital (even physical) communities I care about can learn a lot from understanding what has happened, what has been done well, and what can be done better.
Ethereum's focus on client diversity stems from observing the failure caused by Bitcoin having only one client team. The version of its second-layer solution comes from understanding how Bitcoin's limitations result in limitations on building second-layer solutions with certain trust attributes. More broadly, Ethereum explicitly seeks to cultivate a diverse ecosystem largely to avoid the trap of unilateral capability.
Another example that comes to mind is the concept of network-state movement. Network-states are a new digital separation strategy that allows communities with similar values to break free from the constraints of mainstream society to some extent, and to build their vision of cultural and technological future. However, the experience of Bitcoin Cash (after the fork) suggests that movements attempting to solve problems through forking have a common pattern of failure: they may continue to split, never truly cooperating. The lessons from the experience of Bitcoin Cash go far beyond Bitcoin Cash itself. Like rebellious cryptocurrencies, rebellious network-states need to learn how to actually execute and build, rather than just throwing parties, sharing vibes, and comparing modern barbarism on Twitter with 16th-century European architecture. Zuzalu is in some ways a part of my own attempt to drive this change.
I recommend reading Bier's The Blocksize War and Patterson and Ver's Hijacking Bitcoin to understand a defining moment in Bitcoin's history. In particular, I recommend reading both books with a mindset that doesn't just focus on Bitcoin – instead, the first truly high-stakes civil war of the "digital nation," lessons that offer important lessons for the other digital nations we will be building in the coming decades.