Blocksize Wars- When Bitcoin split in 2

The most common criticism of Bitcoin is that it is slow and has limited capacity.

The easiest way to shut the critics would be to increase blocksize. A large section of the community campaigned for exactly that. But the change was never implemented. In fact, it led to war. A war that split Bitcoin into 2 factions — “Large Blockers” and “Small Blockers”, with each side religiously defending its point of view.

Large Blocker philosophy was fairly straightforward- If Bitcoin had to compete with banks and credit card companies that can execute thousands of transactions per second then it had no choice but to increase speed by increasing blocksize.

Small Blocker philosophy was more nuanced and difficult to understand- Bitcoin’s strength can never be its speed. Traditional Finance will always be faster. Bitcoin’s true strength is its decentralization i.e. its ability to function without a central authority. Protecting decentralization is therefore paramount. An increase in blocksize would lead to centralization.

I’ll explain why high speed can never be Bitcoins strength and how large blocks increase centralization later in the article. At this point, it is important to note that Large and Small Blockers didn't disagree on any technical aspects. They simply had different priorities. Large Blockers…