TD₿: The Blocksize War's Cyber-Soldier Freedom-Fighters by Tomer Strolight
TL;DR The Blocksize War marked a pivotal moment in Bitcoin's history where the future of freedom and decentralization of the protocol was preserved.
Hey Bitcoiners,
Today marks the 5th Bitcoin Independence Day in celebration of when a cohort of Bitcoin users planned to deploy a software upgrade through a user-activated soft fork (UASF) via BIP 148.
This all occurred in a years-long battle between August 2015 and November 2017 when miners and powerful business entities disagreed with community members about the need to perform an upgrade called Segregated Witness (SegWit) to improve Bitcoin’s scalability and functionality.
The miners and large exchanges at the time refused to signal to activate SegWit and returned with a proposal of their own to instead double the blocksize of Bitcoin to increase its transaction throughput. This was not a good solution because by doubling the blocksize, it would only result in a minor improvement in Bitcoin’s scalability at the expense of fewer people running nodes and setting a bad precedent with making protocol changes.
If these miners and exchanges had their way, Bitcoin would be more centralized today, and they would have much more power over the protocol. The good news is, at the time, there were plenty of Bitcoiners who vehemently opposed the blocksize increase.
A group of Bitcoiners recognized the power grab at play here and banded together to create a bold plan to fight back. It was called a User Activated Soft Fork (UASF). It was a software upgrade requiring miners to signal in favor of activating SegWit. If the miners refused to run the UASF and continued to block SegWit’s activation, the users running UASF would simply reject their invalid blocks.
This battle between users and miners would forever be dubbed the “Blocksize War.”
Tomer Strolight was there during the Blocksize War and recently penned this first-hand account of his experience during the time. (08/01/2022)
Eventually, the miners conceded, and SegWit was activated. The UASF marked an important victory that proved that it wasn’t miners, exchanges, or developers who held power in Bitcoin; it was the users.
SegWit was activated, Bitcoin’s decentralization was preserved, and out of SegWit came the Lightning Network.
Happy Bitcoin Independence Day!
Tick tock next block,
Cory Klippsten
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Quote of the Day
“It was a genuine grassroots victory which showed that devs had no control, large companies had no control, & the miners had no control. It was basically a perfect storm and Bitcoin came out the other side completely unscathed.” - Adam Back, Co-Founder and CEO at Blockstream
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Event of the Day
Tonight — Come join Detroit Bitcoiners for food, drinks, and Bitcoin talk at the HopCat from 7:00-9:00 pm.
Not in town for this? Check out all the Bitcoin events at bitcoinerevents.com.
Meme of the Day
(h/t @Excellion)
I love, loving you, Tomer.
Helpful summary for us not around for what seems to have been rather intense and stressful.
Appreciation keeps going up, as Adam Back said having this come out the other end unscathed is compelling.