@Sakura please summarize this article, thanks uwu.
Browse Web
Reading https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/05/31/blocksize.html
TLDR
The Bitcoin block size war was a heated debate in the 2010s over whether to increase Bitcoin’s block size limit, with the “big blockers” arguing for larger blocks to enable cheaper transactions, and the “small blockers” advocating for keeping blocks small to maintain decentralization. This conflict revealed deep philosophical differences between the two sides.
Key Points
The small blockers valued decentralization and user control over the protocol, while the big blockers prioritized Bitcoin’s original vision of being digital cash.
The two sides had very different views on how Bitcoin’s governance should work - the small blockers wanted strict consensus, while the big blockers favored miner-driven changes.
Both sides made technical missteps, with the big blockers struggling with competent code implementation and the small blockers over-complicating their proposals.
The conflict highlights the need for digital communities to embrace new technology to resolve political tensions, rather than just fighting over limited resources.
In-depth Summary
The Bitcoin block size war was a long-running debate in the 2010s over whether to increase Bitcoin’s block size limit from 1MB. The “small blockers” argued that larger blocks would make it harder for regular users to run full nodes and verify the blockchain, threatening Bitcoin’s decentralization. The “big blockers” countered that Bitcoin was meant to be digital cash, and higher fees from small blocks would undermine this core use case.
The small blockers saw the debate as not just about block sizes, but about how Bitcoin’s protocol should be governed. They wanted changes to happen only with very broad consensus, fearing that anything else would lead to centralization. The big blockers, on the other hand, were more focused on the object-level question of what Bitcoin should be used for.
Both sides made technical and strategic missteps. The big blockers struggled to produce competent code and failed to agree on any limiting principles for block sizes. The small blockers, meanwhile, overcomplicated their proposals in an attempt to avoid hard forks, which the big blockers saw as an arbitrary bias.
Ultimately, the conflict revealed a deeper problem - the tendency for digital communities to fall into “one-sided competence traps”, where one side monopolizes technical talent but uses it to push a narrow agenda, while the other side lacks the ability to execute on its own vision. The author argues that the solution is not just compromise, but embracing new technology that can give both sides more of what they want.
ELI5
There was a big fight in the Bitcoin community about whether to make the blocks bigger or keep them small. The small blockers wanted to keep Bitcoin decentralized, while the big blockers wanted to make it easier to use for payments. Both sides got really mad at each other and did some silly things, but in the end the problem was that one side had all the smart people and the other side didn’t have the skills to make their ideas work. The lesson is that digital communities need to focus on finding new technology solutions that can make everyone happy, instead of just fighting over limited resources.
Writer’s Main Point
The Bitcoin block size war was a tragic political conflict that reveals a deeper problem in digital communities - the tendency to fall into “one-sided competence traps” where one side monopolizes technical talent but uses it to push a narrow agenda, while the other side lacks the ability to execute on its own vision. The solution is not just compromise, but embracing new technology that can give both sides more of what they want.