Everyone has their own take on the block size war. I was there. Watching as a noob. My take has always been that this was at its core a philosophical fight.
Yes there was skullduggery and subterfuge...
I'm in Bitcoin since end of 2013 and i did not see it like that. Only parameter i saw them fight over was decentralization. Will it stay decentralized or will it become centralized and governed by basically few people / organizations over long time.
Medium of exchange, store of value, none of those were important. Small blockers winning did not change anything in that regard. Big blockers win would not change nothing in that regard. Instead of LN we would have on chain transactions and stuff like that, but as far as medium of exchange or store of value go, nothing did change or would change except decentralization.
At lease that's my perception of it now when enough time passed by.
But you are right that it's discovering what Bitcoin actually is. That's how things are defined in decentralized systems. Multiple parties offer their interpretation and ideas which than get in fight each other and one with most support wins defining what that system is at that point of time. Maybe more accurate would be to call it "way how Bitcoin develops over time" because whatever it is now, it's not same as when block size war was happening and it wont stay this way in the future (and i don't say that with any negative conotation....if you do not develop and adopt, you die, that's how nature works form everyone......except tardigrades i guess....
Anyway, when i see how big block forks ended, when i see other big and fast block networks and problems that happen on them and when i see how many confirmations are required on them (some have fast big blocks, but receiver requires 200 confirmations) i am glad that we chose what we chose. Big blocks would not be free and i was not ready to pay the price.
It's not like i will die on that hill, it's not like i won't never ever accept blocks being expanded, but i will be on careful side if we ever get to that. I'd never go even close to what big and fast block networks have. We have practical knowledge now about what happens in those networks so we do not have to guess what would happen if we did it.
Medium of exchange, store of value, none of those were important. Small blockers winning did not change anything in that regard. Big blockers win would not change nothing in that regard. Instead of LN we would have on chain transactions and stuff like that, but as far as medium of exchange or store of value go, nothing did change or would change except decentralization.
At lease that's my perception of it now when enough time passed by.
But you are right that it's discovering what Bitcoin actually is. That's how things are defined in decentralized systems. Multiple parties offer their interpretation and ideas which than get in fight each other and one with most support wins defining what that system is at that point of time. Maybe more accurate would be to call it "way how Bitcoin develops over time" because whatever it is now, it's not same as when block size war was happening and it wont stay this way in the future (and i don't say that with any negative conotation....if you do not develop and adopt, you die, that's how nature works form everyone......except tardigrades i guess....
Anyway, when i see how big block forks ended, when i see other big and fast block networks and problems that happen on them and when i see how many confirmations are required on them (some have fast big blocks, but receiver requires 200 confirmations) i am glad that we chose what we chose. Big blocks would not be free and i was not ready to pay the price.
It's not like i will die on that hill, it's not like i won't never ever accept blocks being expanded, but i will be on careful side if we ever get to that. I'd never go even close to what big and fast block networks have. We have practical knowledge now about what happens in those networks so we do not have to guess what would happen if we did it.
