Reflection on the Bitcoin Block Size Debate

Recently, I finished reading two historical books that document the Bitcoin block size war of the 2010s, which 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", discussing from the perspective of supporting large blocks.

Reading these two historical books documenting events I have personally experienced and participated in is fascinating. Although I am quite familiar with most events and the narratives from both sides, there are still some interesting details I did not know or had forgotten, and viewing these situations from a new perspective is also interesting. At that time, I was a "big block supporter," but I was a pragmatic moderate block advocate, opposing extreme growth or absolutist claims. So do I still support the views I had back then?

The Viewpoint of the Small Block Faction

The initial debate of the block size war revolved around a simple question: Should Bitcoin increase the block size limit from 1 MB through a hard fork to allow for more transactions, reduce fees, but at the cost of making it more difficult and expensive to run and verify nodes?

The impression I got from Bier's book is that the small block faction is more concerned with how protocol-level issues determine this higher-level question. In their view, protocol changes (, especially "hard forks" ), should be very rare and require a high level of consensus among protocol users.

Bitcoin does not attempt to compete with payment processors. Instead, Bitcoin aims to become a completely new type of currency, free from the control of central organizations and central banks. If Bitcoin begins to have a highly active governance structure, or becomes susceptible to manipulation by miners, exchanges, or other large corporations, it will lose this valuable unique advantage forever.

In Bier's narrative, what causes the greatest discomfort for the small block faction from the large block faction is that they often try to gather a relatively small number of large players together to legitimize and promote their preferred changes.

The Viewpoint of the Big Block Faction

The big block faction usually focuses on one key question: what exactly should Bitcoin be? Should it be a store of value ( digital gold ), or a means of payment ( digital cash )? For them, it has been clear from the beginning that the original vision, as well as the vision recognized by all big block factions, is digital cash. This is even explicitly mentioned in the white paper!

The big block faction often cites other works of Satoshi Nakamoto, including the section on simplified payment verification in the white paper, as well as statements advocating for gradually increasing block size through hard forks on Bitcointalk.

For them, the shift from focusing on digital cash to digital gold represents a turn, a change agreed upon by a small and closely-knit core group of developers, who then believed they had the right to impose their views on the entire project.

The Small Block faction proposed that Bitcoin can serve as both cash and gold, meaning Bitcoin becomes the "first layer" focused on being gold, while the "second layer" protocol built on Bitcoin provides cheap payments. However, Ver believes these solutions are very inadequate in practice and criticizes them in depth over several chapters.

Key Differences in Perspectives

Ver's description of the specific debate aligns with the small block faction: both sides agree that the small block faction places more emphasis on the ease of running nodes, while the large block faction prioritizes low transaction fees. They both acknowledge that reasonable differences in beliefs are the key factors leading to the debate.

But Bier and Ver's descriptions of deeper issues are completely different:

• For Bier, the small block faction represents users, opposing a small but powerful group of miners and exchanges attempting to control the blockchain network for their own benefit. Small blocks keep Bitcoin decentralized by ensuring that ordinary users can run nodes and validate the blockchain network.

• For Ver, the big block faction represents users, opposing a small group of self-proclaimed high-ranking clergy and venture capital-backed companies that profit from the second-layer solutions necessary for the small block roadmap. Big blocks keep Bitcoin decentralized by ensuring that users can continue to afford on-chain transaction fees without relying on centralized second-layer infrastructure.

I see that the closest point of "agreement on the debate terms" between both sides is Bier's book acknowledging that many of the large block advocates are well-intentioned, but frequently criticizing the incompetence of the large block camp, while Ver's book tends to attribute malicious intent and even conspiracy theories to the small block camp, but rarely criticizes their capabilities.

My Views Then and Now

During my personal experience of the Bitcoin block size war, I usually stood on the side of the big block faction. My support for the big block faction is focused on several key points:

• A key intention of Bitcoin is digital cash, and high transaction fees could stifle this use case.
• I am not convinced by the "meta-layer" statement of the small block派.
• Segregated Witness is a proposal adopted by the small block faction to slightly increase the block size, which appears unnecessarily complex compared to simply increasing the block size through a hard fork.
• The small block faction is indeed conducting very uncool social media censorship to impose their views.

At the same time, I am extremely disappointed with the big block faction on some key points, especially their unwillingness to agree to any realistic block size limit principle.

At that time, I actually had a principled approach to determine the block size limit, that is, to strike a balance between the increased cost of writing to the chain ( transaction fees ) and the cost of reading from the chain ( node software requirements ).

However, this compromise-oriented approach has never been accepted by either side. I think the larger block faction is more at fault here than the smaller block faction; the smaller block faction was initially willing to moderately increase the block size, whereas the larger block faction was unwilling to compromise and quickly turned to an overall philosophy that almost any non-trivial restriction on block size is illegitimate.

Overall, by reading these two books, I find 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, which is that blocks need to be larger, preferably achieved through the simple and clean hard fork described by Satoshi Nakamoto, but the small block camp makes fewer embarrassing mistakes technically, and their position leads to absurd results less frequently.

Unilateral Capability Trap

Through reading these two books, my overall impression is one of a political tragedy, a tragedy that is frequently encountered in various contexts:

One side monopolizes all capable individuals but uses its power to promote narrow and biased views; the other side correctly identifies the problem but is immersed in the focus of opposition, failing to cultivate the technical capability to execute its own plans.

To some extent, it is not the opposition's fault: without a platform to execute and accumulate experience, it is difficult to become proficient in execution. However, what is particularly evident in the block size debate is that the big block faction seems to be completely unaware of the need to have capability in execution. The big block faction ultimately paid a heavy price for their focus on opposition rather than construction: even when they forked into their own chain ( Bitcoin Cash ), they split again twice in a short period until the community finally stabilized.

I refer to this issue as the unilateral capability trap. This seems to be a fundamental problem faced by anyone trying to establish a political entity, project, or community that they hope will be democratic or diverse. If there were stronger and deeper methods to prevent and escape the unilateral capability trap, we would benefit immensely.

Less conflict, more technology

While reading these two books, one glaring omission stands out more than anything else: the term "ZK-SNARK" does not appear at all in either book. There is almost no excuse for this: even by the mid-2010s, ZK-SNARKs and their potential for scalability ( and privacy ) were well known.

The ultimate way to alleviate political tensions is not compromise, but new technologies: discovering entirely new methods that can simultaneously provide both sides with more of what they want. We have seen several such instances in Ethereum, such as:

• Justin Drake promotes the adoption of BLS aggregation, enabling Ethereum's proof of stake to handle more validators.
• EIP-7702 achieves the goals of ERC-3074 in a way that is significantly more compatible with smart contract wallets.
• Multi-dimensional Gas has helped increase Ethereum's capacity to accommodate rollup data without increasing the worst-case block size.

When an ecosystem stops embracing new technologies, it inevitably becomes stagnant while becoming more contentious. This is a key reason why I feel very uneasy about the perspective of degrowth and "we cannot solve social problems with technology."

A key question for the future of Bitcoin is whether it can become a technologically advanced ecosystem. The development of Inscriptions and later BitVM has created new possibilities for the second layer, improving what Lightning can do. Hopefully, Udi Wertheimer's theory is correct, that the acquisition of an ETF by ETH signifies the end of Saylorism and a renewed recognition that Bitcoin needs technical improvements.

Why do I care about this issue?

I care about analyzing the success and failure of Bitcoin, not to belittle Bitcoin to elevate Ethereum. On the contrary, I care about analyzing these issues because the Ethereum and other digital ( and even physical ) communities can learn a lot from understanding what happened, what was done well, and what can be improved.

Ethereum's focus on client diversity stems from observing the failures caused by having only one client team for Bitcoin. The versions of its second-layer solutions originate from understanding how the limitations of Bitcoin lead to constraints in building second layers with certain trust properties. More broadly, Ethereum explicitly attempts to cultivate a diverse ecosystem largely to avoid the pitfalls of unilateral capabilities.

Another example is the movement of network states. A network state is a new digital secession strategy that allows communities with shared values to break free from the constraints of mainstream society to some extent and build their vision for the future of culture and technology. However, the experience of Bitcoin Cash after the fork ( shows that movements solving problems through forking have a common failure pattern: they may split repeatedly and never truly cooperate. Rebel network states need to learn how to execute and build in practice, rather than just having parties, sharing vibes, and comparing modern barbarism with 16th-century European architecture memes on Twitter. Zuzalu is, to some extent, part of my own attempt to push this change.

I recommend reading Bier's "The Blocksize War" and Patterson and Ver's "Hijacking Bitcoin" to understand a decisive moment in Bitcoin's history. In particular, I suggest reading these two books with a mindset that focuses not only on Bitcoin. Instead, this is the first truly high-stakes civil war of the "digital nation," and these experiences prepare us for the future.