The blocksize war

[apogio]

Hello. I am interested in learning about "The blocksize war".

I have been in Bitcoin since 2020, and therefore, I don't know the history before 2020. I know that it was a "debate" regarding the block size, but I want to read details about it.

I can google it, but I don't know who to trust. So, knowing that there are many knowledgeable people in this forum, could you tell me more about this period?

Of course, any relevant website, video, article is more than welcome.

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[Yogee]

I don't know if anyone would be interested in digging up all those discussions from 2015 to 2017. There's a book on this that's available on Amazon and the reviews are pretty high. You may want to check that out if you want to save time from searching. I'm not forcing you but if you're interested then https://www.amazon.com/Blocksize-War-controls-Bitcoins-protocol/dp/B08YQMC2WM

[apogio]

I don't know if anyone would be interested in digging up all those discussions from 2015 to 2017. There's a book on this that's available on Amazon and the reviews are pretty high. You may want to check that out if you want to save time from searching. I'm not forcing you but if you're interested then https://www.amazon.com/Blocksize-War-controls-Bitcoins-protocol/dp/B08YQMC2WM

I will order it. My primary goal is to educate myself in technical aspects of bitcoin. I believe that it will be beneficial to read the arguments of both sides.

[Hamza2424]

Naah, The blocksize war is an old-fashioned topic. Typically I am not sure why you are asking for it again is it just because of the recent ordinals Block crisis? For that even you are late. OP Block size is more than enough for now. What I am observing from the current developments and the global institutional interests Hash War, or you can say Reward War for Bitcoin is gonna be a hot topic. It is already discussed by different views but in coming years it will be the highlight of the industry.

I will order it. My primary goal is to educate myself in technical aspects of bitcoin. I believe that it will be beneficial to read the arguments of both sides.

Well, I respect your motive still.. Lets see what other have  to share on it.

[apogio]

Naah, The blocksize war is an old-fashioned topic. Typically I am not sure why you are asking for it again is it just because of the recent ordinals Block crisis? For that even you are late. OP Block size is more than enough for now.

I am asking simply because of curiosity. I want to read about it, because I really have no clue about it. Simple as that.

[bitmover]

Naah, The blocksize war is an old-fashioned topic. Typically I am not sure why you are asking for it again is it just because of the recent ordinals Block crisis? For that even you are late. OP Block size is more than enough for now.

I am asking simply because of curiosity. I want to read about it, because I really have no clue about it. Simple as that.

Quick summary:

Some scammers wanted to create a new coin using bitcoin name.
They first tried to impose their idea to bitcoin (increase block size), but that idea was rejected by the  majority miners.

So they forked the coin and created  a new one, called bitcoin cash. Later on, they did anoyhert fork and created another coin, bitcoin sv, whose founder is the faketoshi.

Those fraudsters made a lot of money in both forks.


Later on bitcoin community created the Segwit upgrade, which created the concept of Block weight  , virtually increasing Block size without reducing decentralization.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segregated_Witness

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_size_limit_controversy

[Artemis3]

Hello. I am interested in learning about "The blocksize war".

I have been in Bitcoin since 2020, and therefore, I don't know the history before 2020. I know that it was a "debate" regarding the block size, but I want to read details about it.

I can google it, but I don't know who to trust. So, knowing that there are many knowledgeable people in this forum, could you tell me more about this period?

Of course, any relevant website, video, article is more than welcome.

This forum has a search function, everything was said here as well.

[apogio]

Quick summary:

Some scammers wanted to create a new coin using bitcoin name.
They first tried to impose their idea to bitcoin (increase block size), but that idea was rejected by the  majority miners.

What do you mean "rejected by the majority of miners"?

If a miner decides to change their code on their unique mining device, the changes wouldn't be accepted. I get that.

But if many miners decide to change their codes, do they need to be more than 50% of the total mining power to be able to do whatever they want?

So they forked the coin and created  a new one, called bitcoin cash. Later on, they did anoyhert fork and created another coin, bitcoin sv, whose founder is the faketoshi.

Those fraudsters made a lot of money in both forks.

How? From who? Sorry for asking, I am completely ignorrant on how this thing could work. I find it extremely stupid. Pardon me...

[bitmover]

Quick summary:

Some scammers wanted to create a new coin using bitcoin name.
They first tried to impose their idea to bitcoin (increase block size), but that idea was rejected by the  majority miners.

What do you mean "rejected by the majority of miners"?

If a miner  wants to reject a new consensus rule, he just won't include blocks with that rule.

Miners vote with their processing power. And the longest chain, with more processing power, is always the main chain.

As bch chain (with the rules reject by the majority miners) was not the longest, that chain became a forked chain and a new coin.

It is all written in the Bitcoin white paper and in the links I showed you earlier.

[DooMAD]

So they forked the coin and created  a new one, called bitcoin cash.

It's also worth noting that the BCH chain barely survived its first few blocks because the hashrate was so low.  They had to implement EDA, or "Emergency Difficulty Adjustment" (effectively a cheat to artificially lower the difficulty), in order to keep the chain alive and make it easier to find blocks.  These forkcoins were vastly inferior from the outset.


//EDIT:

Public Notice:   Any threads about blocksize are invariably targeted by notorious forum troll franky1.  He will spread lies and disinformation about historical events because he hates Bitcoin developers and has absurd notions about how Bitcoin should work.  He is incapable of honesty.  Do not take anything he says at face value.  He will try to blind you with pseudoscience and technologically illiterate gibberish.

[franky1]

Quick summary:

Some scammers wanted to create a new coin using bitcoin name.
They first tried to impose their idea to bitcoin (increase block size), but that idea was rejected by the  majority miners.

What do you mean "rejected by the majority of miners"?

If a miner  wants to reject a new consensus rule, he just won't include blocks with that rule.

Miners vote with their processing power. And the longest chain, with more processing power, is always the main chain.

As bch chain (with the rules reject by the majority miners) was not the longest, that chain became a forked chain and a new coin.

It is all written in the Bitcoin white paper and in the links I showed you earlier.

bitmover has not got any responses correct

firstly several teams(not core) wanted to upgrade the bitcoin network in ways that would allow more transactions per block by increasing the blocksize.(the REKT era) core and their sponsored PR groups viamently fought against anyone not part of cores leadership of devs and their roadmap plan.

core(and their sponsors) wanted to upgrade to mess with scripting byte counting and formats to activate a feature that would allow other subnetworks for corporate middlement fee grabs. this feature also allowed fatter signature(script)space.. thus extending the blocksize.. BUT not really resulting in more multiples of transaction counts.
and thats the jist of the war.. both sides not getting consensus(mass vote) in 2015-mid 2017

 core proposed in mid 2017 a method to implement their upgrade that did not need majority users vote to activate cores method (due to 9 months of lack of even 50% demand for cores idea.. (nov2016-july2017))
the network upgraded eventually(unnatural 100% compliance in just a matter of weeks) using a mandated blackmail event(NYA agreement) which caused the fork. those that were on another team slinkered off to live on the fork caused by core and adapted their fork into something different due to realising core (emphasis on their name) became centralised powerhouse no one can fight

it did not require miners to write new code themselves.. instead it was core devs and their corporate sponsors that wrote code demanding that mining pools had to flag a new signal to accept the core upgrade or be rejected and forked off the network

core accomplished their goal

it was not a other team caused the fork. it was not average joe user nodes, it was not miners that wrote the code for segwit. it was corporate sponsored core devs that wrote the segwit code and blackmailed the wider community to comply or have their blocks rejected. where the corporations(NYA agreement) were the majority economic services everyone uses so had to follow or not have their coins seen by those services.

the mining pools did not even need to run the segwit code, they just needed to flag a bit of data in a block header that they were complying to avoid rejection.
the users nodes didnt need to pre-run segwit code to cause activation neither

i now expect certain cultish behaviour people to scream and cry their mantra of how they want to promote core as the saviours and leaders and how anyone going against core are agaisnt bitcoin.. and must be ignored, banned and told to f**k off

no
people can still admire bitcoin but despise cores centralist methodology, because bitcoin as a previously promoted decentralised network should not be complying to a central power house of blackmail. and no this does make those despising core be pigeon holed into supporting the forked team. nor does it mean anyone that wants to promote how core gained too much power should be told to shut up and just obey the cult mindset as a blind follower

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

Hello. I am interested in learning about "The blocksize war".

I have been in Bitcoin since 2020, and therefore, I don't know the history before 2020. I know that it was a "debate" regarding the block size, but I want to read details about it.

I can google it, but I don't know who to trust. So, knowing that there are many knowledgeable people in this forum, could you tell me more about this period?

Of course, any relevant website, video, article is more than welcome.

You have not been in this space back in days of Blocksize war and Hashrate war so you can study about them backwards. Start from today, you will discover that most of forked coins from those wars now are dead coins.

Explore these wars and their consequent forks with How many Bitcoin forks are there

A biggest Bitcoin fork in history is Bitcoin Cash (BCH). They tried to scam Bitcoin community and investors but a few years later, that blockchain network has considerable drop in hashrate and its value can not catch BTC value.

See Historical hashrate chart for BTC and BCH, make your conclusion. https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/hashrate-btc-bch.html#alltime

Their forum is dead too

Code:

https://forum.bitcoin.com/

[yhiaali3]

Regardless of all that war and disagreements that have occurred what matters is the end result.

The result of this war is clear to everyone on the ground, as we see the (original) Bitcoin in exponential growth because it is the most decentralized and safest, while all the currencies that chose another path and were divided by Hard Fork are almost dead.

[crwth]

It is important to remember that it gave birth to two coins Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV because it's about the blocksize being limited. That "war" made hard forks from BTC and it's been that ever since. Don't go trusting any of it. It's still better to use and buy BTC. That Bitcoin SV definitely not gonna be good because of the faketoshi.

I think a lot of people made a lot of money because of those forks, so maybe it's the thing that some people are thankful?

[adaseb]

Man you know you are old when you remember the days of crazy Roger Ver screaming at the camera in his hotel room saying “It’s Bitcoin CASH!!!” Not BCash, don’t call it BCash. And then he gives the camera the finger.

Surprisingly these days we don’t have these block size wars anymore. I guess people accepted and aside from the Ordinals, fees were low for most transactions.

[Lucius]

~snip~
Surprisingly these days we don’t have these block size wars anymore. I guess people accepted and aside from the Ordinals, fees were low for most transactions.

It's an expensive game, and in the past few years, apparently no one could afford to try something similar. However, it should be kept in mind that fork wars are not something that is a thing of the past, especially in the case that the spot BTC ETF is approved in the US, which in combination with what BlackRock stated in this context means that at some point in the future no one should be surprised with some new fork that will be backed by a fund with a capital of several trillion $.

[OgNasty]

Naah, The blocksize war is an old-fashioned topic. Typically I am not sure why you are asking for it again is it just because of the recent ordinals Block crisis? For that even you are late. OP Block size is more than enough for now.

I am asking simply because of curiosity. I want to read about it, because I really have no clue about it. Simple as that.

Having lived it and watching what happened, I would recommend you look into the New York Agreement, who the players were, what they agreed upon as a compromise and why it went wrong. Then look at the comments of the developers after segwit was activated and their tune completely changed, trolling those who were dumb enough to trust them while being proud of their toxic behavior. That in a nutshell is why Bitcoin’s dominance isn’t >90% right now.

[ranochigo]

You don't have to trust any of us and you definitely shouldn't. Whatever you're going to receive in this thread would be sprinkled with tons of FUD. If you want to get the most objective view, look at BIP102, BIP103, Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin XT. Those are several of the proposals and softwares that permitted block size increase. In addition, you should see the whole fiasco about the User Activated Soft Fork which is part of the series of events that precipitated the adoption of SegWit.

Segwit was ready, and make no mistake it is still in effect a block size increase indirectly and still increased the TPS of the network.

You would realize that tons of politics were at play and there were tons of disagreement among the key renowned developers and community figures. You would have to skim through the mailing list as well and come to your own conclusion.

[ABCbits]

SegWit activation and BCH fork ends "the blocksize war", so you might also want to read this article, The Long Road To SegWit - Bitcoin Magazine.

I don't know if anyone would be interested in digging up all those discussions from 2015 to 2017. There's a book on this that's available on Amazon and the reviews are pretty high. You may want to check that out if you want to save time from searching. I'm not forcing you but if you're interested then https://www.amazon.com/Blocksize-War-controls-Bitcoins-protocol/dp/B08YQMC2WM

While that book have good rating on Amazon, have you read that book?

It is important to remember that it gave birth to two coins Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV because it's about the blocksize being limited. That "war" made hard forks from BTC and it's been that ever since. Don't go trusting any of it. It's still better to use and buy BTC. That Bitcoin SV definitely not gonna be good because of the faketoshi.

I think a lot of people made a lot of money because of those forks, so maybe it's the thing that some people are thankful?

BSV isn't part of "the blocksize war" though since BSV forked from BCH in November 2018, while "the blocksize war" ended on late 2017.

[pooya87]

It is interesting that almost everyone remembers the "block size war" as the end of it in 2017 and with the shitcoin called bcash. In truth this "conflict" about scaling bitcoin lasted at least 5 years and it definitely wasn't just bcash versus bitcoin with only 2 sides. There were many sides or better said many different proposals for different approaches which we may categorize in a simple way into 2 or 3 categories.

1. The group saying bitcoin should scale using the second layer and should not have a hard fork.
2. The group saying bitcoin should only scale on-chain (layer one and only layer one) by hard forking to a bigger block size
3. The group saying both at the same time. This was short lived and was very messy mainly seen in SegWit2x which had its own separate issues.

Of course this is an oversimplification since for example the second group consists of many different approaches like one saying we should have a one time fork to a massive block size while another saying we should let the miners choose to change the size at any time they wanted, etc.