Before I’m accused of necromancy or equine-abuse, understand there are significant demographics finishing their first Antonopoulos marathon wondering where Bitcoin stands in 2018. This is an article intended primarily for that audience in an attempt to fast-forward beginner-level conversations beyond topics that are, at this point, seemingly well settled. Catch up on the block size debate here, and bookmark Jameson Lopp’s Bitcoin resources in the meantime. Hopefully, if you’re reading this, you’re leaving price obsession behind in lieu of a fuller appreciation for what Bitcoin represents as a means of securing your financial sovereignty. If not, trust me — you’ll sleep better. Full disclosure: while a decided small-block advocate, I aim to represent opposing viewpoints fairly. That said, Roger Ver is a con artist who perpetuates labeling confusion for personal gain. Have I gone full Mannfred and stabbed Satoshi in the back? Maybe I’ve merely lost journalistic credibility. Declare my crimes on Twitter @Whytepaper.

For the inaugural post, a special guest. Were there such thing as a Bitcoin OG, Dr. Brian Goss certainly qualifies. Not only did he mine his first Bitcoin in 2010 (for those whom Bitcoin Age is of import), but he was also an early member of the Bitcoin Foundation, leading elections for a time in 2012. He remains active in the community and spends his free time fetching fetal bats from his pool. In addition to his cryptdentials, the man is a practicing radiologist. He’s been on both sides of the block size debate, and was amicable enough to respond at length to my questions. Ladies and gentlemen, Brian Goss.

Fundamentally, the block size debate was a feud between those who believed in the primacy of miners versus the primacy of the user.

Rhetoric about sustainable scaling soared like mashed potatoes in a food fight destined to fragment the community between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash on August 1, 2017. The subsequent wet bologna that was the New York Agreement and Segwit2x (not to be confused with “regular” Segwit) seemed to seal the deal and settle this debate once and for all. As Brian puts it,

“ I just think the discussion moved elsewhere. The big blockers are all over in Big Block Land with Bitcoin Cash. They’re doing their thing, and that’s…I don’t think it’s an issue anymore for the technical community.”

But why? Aren’t Moore’s law and related scaling paradigms sufficient to handle larger blocks and greater bandwidth demands? Two words: genesis block.

“I don’t know that we should trust that the internet will continue to get much, much, much faster over time. But at any rate, the bandwidth isn’t the constraining factor. It’s how long does it take you to figure out what the truth is. Starting from nothing, how long will it take to build the entire chain? What degree of truthiness do you want to have?”

Hence, small-blockers complaining that increasing the block size decreases decentralization. Supposedly, huge blocks give an advantage to mining pools with expensive, sophisticated technical capacities. (Summary of arguments for and against.) Small blocks more reliably ensure that the little guy can have a copy of the entire Bitcoin blockchain on a personal device. Roger Ver disagreed. Sometime later, Craig Wright emerged from a Mescaline-induced odyssey and joined the fray, adopting a miner-first attitude.

Is that Satoshi?

Brian reiterates his view.

“Two competing theories out there as to what actually provides security. There’s the ‘I just want to know that my transactions will be accepted’ level of security. For that, you don’t need to prove anything other than the miners accepted your transaction. SPV wallets are sort of built around this concept…If you actually want to know for certain for yourself without asking and trusting others, you need to be able to trace the history of those coins. I’m a radiologist, right? So I’m not the best technical person to lay out what are the true bottlenecks at every level. But I think Peter Rizun has done a bunch of work on this and it’s actually just admission that the mempool is poorly architected and that you can get a lot of speed-ups there.”

And as for Satoshi Maximalism? Is adhering to the original vision important? I hear that from time to time.

“Not at all. The original code was more or less crap and a lot of initial features have to be immediately disabled. And it was all just a jumble. there were a lot of really bad choices in the Bitcoin software… a lot of things that he didn’t recognize. Nobody adheres to the original code as it was, and I don’t think Satoshi had a particularly deep insight into the end game for Bitcoin. When we’re 15–20 years down the road, what is it going to look like?

If the block size debate is actually behind us, what’s next?

In the nearest terms, Schnorr might be the biggest real change that could get rolled out. There’s a real BIP for it, but I think right now it’s nice to have a bear market and to have the distraction of the Segwit2x thing kind of put aside, so people can work on the real meat … We’re just getting into the real meat of Bitcoin development right now. To actually scale this thing. Everything else has been, to paint with a broad brush, everything else has been sort of housekeeping, to get ready for actual scaling.