The Research wing of cryptocurrency derivatives exchange Bitmex published a chapter of Jonathan Bier’s book, The Blocksize Wars, telling the little known story of the Bitcoin community’s scaling squabbles. The tenth chapter offers insight into the ideal that may have led to a robust digital assets market.
In the latest instalment of crypto derivatives exchange, Bitmex’s weekly chapter-by-chapter dissemination of author, Jonathan Bier’s The Bocksize Wars – detailing the secret scaling “war” that has been raging in the Bitcoin community practically since Nakamoto went dark – one of the first digital asset’s main developers attempts a coup on the network. The 10th chapter of the book offers insight into how Bitcoin veteran, Gavin Andreesen’s gung ho attempt to increase block sizes sparked a community-splitting philosophical feud.
The interesting tidbit of information that one might glean from Bier’s telling of events is the likely root of why there exists such a diverse digital assets market today. The progenitor asset’s technical shortcomings – with regard to sustaining the free-of-regulatory-oversight, digital economy envisioned in its white paper – were, and continue to be, a bone of contention for the community. Gavin, in his aggressive bid to settle the debate, kicked a hornet’s nest that may have kickstarted what led to the robust digital assets market of today.
“We Support The Implementation Of BIP101. We Have Found Gavin’s Arguments On Both The Need For Larger Blocks And The Feasibility Of Their Implementation — While Safeguarding Bitcoin’s Decentralization – To Be Convincing. BIP101 And 8MB Blocks Are Already Supported By A Majority Of The Miners And We Feel It Is Time For The Industry To Unite Behind This Proposal.”
Excerpt from a 2015 circular signed by, then presiding heads of major cryptocurrency-centered firms, BitPay, Blockchain.info, Circle, Kncminer, itBit, Bitnet, Xapo and BitGo
In August of 2015, the seemingly self-appointed leader of Bitcoin, Gavin Andresen, had gathered his generals, Big Crypto, and had garnered industry support for his, and Mike Hearn’s, BIP101 upgrade proposal. The pair sought to increase Bitcoin block size, which were capped at 1megabyte at the time – in order to have the network ready to support a growing number of users.
With the Bitcoin network block size limit, at the time, already threatening to prove the neo-financial system too restrictive for mass scale use, Andresen bypassed the Bitcoin community – which can’t seem to make up its mind about what to put on its toast at breakfast – and went to the incumbent gatekeepers to adoption, crypto companies. Those opposing the proposed upgrade responded to the move with a resounding “how dare you“, which went on to spark a fierce community-wide spat, that saw Bitcoin supporters splitting across philosophical lines.
The token resulting from the Bitcoin network split, Bitcoin XT, may not have outdone Bitcoin – market performance-wise – and has since faded into obscurity, but it had set the precedent for what to do when one is dissatisfied with Bitcoin’s technical framework, make another Bitcoin. Now Bitcoin XT was not the first Altcoin that the honour of first Altcoin belongs to. That place of prestige belongs to the now-defunct Namecoin, which was a Nakamoto and Andersen supported ID/Domain name protocol layer token, split from the main Bitcoin network.
Tokens like Litecoin, Dash, and Ripple also precede the coin, but were – more or less – created around a similar sentiment. Bitcoin, in it’s current iteration, is too inefficient to be the backbone of a global digital economy. But the hornet’s nest that Gavin Andersen had kicked had brought to the fore, something that many Bitcoin supporters had felt, “Prepare for mass adoption”.
Decentralization is the ideal that gives the digital assets industry its fire. It is, perhaps, also why it attracts so many who have been failed by, or excluded from, the mechanics of the incumbent economic system. Decentralization may also be its achilles heel however, as upgrade discussions regularly descend in monkey parliament sessions where all opine, and nothing gets done.
With many possibly seeing that Bitcoin might never be ready on time to accommodate the world, there appears to have been a movement, post-2015, of various developers coming out with their own renditions of what the perfect Bitcoin would look like. Sometimes they envisioned Bitcoin as a ponzi scheme. The digital currencies of today serve various niche purposes on their respective blockchain platforms (niche Bitcoins, if you will,) while many payment tokens are purposed to be mass-use focused Bitcoins.
Bitcoin progeny, Bitcoin Cash and Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) based payment coin, Coti is a whole self-service banking tokens that come complete with payment cards, while Bitcoin is only just thinking about incorporating smart contracts into it’s network. Gavin Andersen may not be the saviour of Bitcoin that Bier paints him as intending to be, but he may – arguably – be the fellow who inspired the industry into robust development.
That is not to say that a diverse can cryptocurrency market would not have occurred without Andersen’s actions, but his taking the bull by the horns may have inspired many, who shared his sentiments and frustrations. This is just a thought, not lift Andersen up as some crypto-Spartacus.
