Some reflections on the Bitcoin block size war
Reflecting on the Bitcoin block size war is like revisiting a crucial moment in the evolution of cryptocurrency. It was a time of intense debate and divergence of opinions within the community, with stakeholders passionately advocating for different scaling solutions. The clash between those in favor of increasing the block size to accommodate more transactions and those advocating for off-chain scaling solutions like Segregated Witness (SegWit) showcased the complexity of governance in decentralized networks.
The Bitcoin Block Size War was more than just a technical dispute; it was a philosophical battle over the essence of what Bitcoin should be. Small blockers believed that any significant increase in block size could centralize the network and compromise the ability of regular users to run nodes anonymously and affordably. They saw Bitcoin as a means to preserve individual financial sovereignty and resist centralization. On the other hand, big blockers argued that Bitcoin needed to be scalable to be used as accessible digital cash, focusing on reducing transaction fees and processing more transactions per second. The central disagreement was about how to balance decentralization and scalability without compromising Bitcoin's core principles.
Im hindsight bigger blocks just make sense, ordinals would scale with bitcoin if we had larger core blocks. Although this is obviously not what satoshi wanted for the core protocol.