“The use of the word "maximalist" really came back into play during the
scaling wars and 2017 ICO hype cycle. It seems that the use of "toxic
maximalism" as a descriptor really picked up mid-2018. For what it's worth,
maximalists were later vindicated when it was shown that ~80% of ICOs were
scams. […] In late 2019 we saw Samson Mow start producing “Toxic Maximalist”
hats […]. the pejorative reclamation which happened around 2017 was a
resurgence in Mircean toxic maximalism. This was a response, in part, due to
the failure of technical maximalism’s promise that sidechains would result in
an explosion of innovation linked to Bitcoin. Rather, we saw sidechains
stagnate while Ethereum and other protocols saw a great deal of adoption and
new functionality. Because the narrative of technical maximalism was fading in
strength, folks needed a new narrative that didn't require sidechains to
succeed. This is what the reverberations of Mircea offered in the form of the
#bitcoin-assets folks adopting his style and forcing it into the conversation.
By reclaiming the pejorative, Bitcoiners use it as a social signaling
mechanism. We see the same sort of signaling of maximalists saying that
“Bitcoin is not crypto” which is technically incorrect at the surface level
[…].” (Lopp, 2023, p. 6)


“While Reddit’s mechanics and algorithms tend to squash controversy and create
echo chambers, Twitter’s engagement mechanics are actually optimized to boost
the reach and engagement of controversial posts. Add that to the fact that the
content length of tweets is quite restricted and you get a recipe for
rewarding edgy knee-jerk tweets that dunk on other tweets with a complete lack
of nuance. While it can be a fun game to play, it’s not particularly healthy
for quality of discourse.” (Lopp, 2023, p. 5)


“By 2015 we saw a mass migration from BitcoinTalk to the /r/bitcoin subreddit,
where it had amassed over 150,000 subscribers. While BitcoinTalk did have
admins, it was also a forum that was composed of many boards for different
topics, so moderation was less common as long as you were posting in the
appropriate topic area. Reddit, as a platform, is somewhat different. Due to
how Reddit sequesters users into silos that each have their own rules and
rulers (moderators,) along with how content visibility is modified by voting,
I see Reddit as a platform that incentivizes groupthink and emotional
responses over rational debate. The end result of this is that large
subreddits inevitably become echo chambers; if you try to discuss a contrarian
idea then you won’t see any engagement because your post will be downvoted to
oblivion. As there was more contention around how to move forward with scaling
Bitcoin, the moderators of /r/bitcoin decided to ban discussion of hard fork
proposals. […] the r/bitcoin moderators were influenced by Theymos and
immersed in the technical conversation on the development mailing list. Thus,
they just brought its norms over to a wider body of folks following along on
Reddit. […] it catalyzed a number of folks into migrating to the /r/btc
subreddit. Now, 7 years later, the residents of /r/btc are still wailing over
losing the scaling wars due to “censorship”.” (Lopp, 2023, p. 5)


“The term “Bitcoin maximalism” was popularized in 2014 by Vitalik Buterin
[…].” (Lopp, 2023, p. 4)


“The #bitcoin-assets crew were so adamant about rejecting changes to Bitcoin
that they forked Bitcoin Core 0.5, created the “real” Bitcoin Foundation, and
maintained their own full node implementation. Well, “maintained” is being
generous. Due to the high level of friction to join this group and their poor
outreach efforts, it remained quite niche. Although Mircea himself failed to
expand his reach beyond the one IRC room, (he was banned from Twitter for
making a death threat against Andreas Antonopoulos) some of these behaviors
were mimicked by the adherents onto other platforms...” (Lopp, 2023, p. 3)


“Mircea Popescu was a lead figure in the early development of toxic
maximalism, before it was even a term. He was a prolific writer (ranter) who
disseminated some ideas that have had a lasting impact. And at least a few of
his followers from the cult of La Serenissima are still with us today, having
attained influential positions on social networks... The Mircea adherents,
sometimes known as the #bitcoin-assets denizens (their hangout on IRC), formed
a unique culture. In their eyes, if you didn’t have a GPG key on the WoT
(Bitcoin-OTC web of trust) then you were an “unperson.” If you did jump
through the hoops to join the WoT then you needed to engage in meaningful
interactions and trades to get yourself recommended by other WoT users via
positive reviews. Popescu held court in this IRC room, and if you didn’t fit
in with their culture, understand the lingo, and have a high tolerance for
bigotry, misogyny, and racism then you wouldn’t have a very good time there.
Mircea did not place much weight on the effectiveness of his communications;
he’d post a rant in his bombastic hard-to-follow style and would not be
particularly concerned with how it was interpreted. Take, for example, his
anti-SegWit article in which he decided to “explain” his view by posting a
bounty for a protocol developer’s assassination.” (Lopp, 2023, p. 3)


“By 2014 Bitcoin had a rather vibrant group of skilled contributors. The
Sidechains Whitepaper was released and the future was bright; we finally had
an answer for how to enable folks to innovate within the Bitcoin ecosystem
while not risking harm to Bitcoin itself. In 2015 the Lightning Network
whitepaper promised even further innovation in the area of low latency, high
volume transactions that were also anchored to Bitcoin. Maximalists rejoiced;
the world was our oyster and hyperbitcoinization was clearly underway. Of
course, just a few months later in 2015 we saw the launch of Ethereum, which
was a completely new approach to crypto asset protocols. Thus began a major
shift in the development of crypto asset protocols.” (Lopp, 2023, p. 2)


Jameson Lopp, “A History of Bitcoin Maximalism,” Cypherpunk Cogitations (blog), March 25, 2023, https://blog.lopp.net/history-of-bitcoin-maximalism/.


“Network states are a new strategy for a kind of digital secession, allowing
communities that have aligned values to gain some independence from mainstream
society and build out their own visions for the future of culture and
technology. But the experience of (post-fork) Bitcoin Cash shows that
movements organized around forking to resolve problems have a common failure
mode: they can end up splitting again and again and never actually managing to
cooperate. Like rebel cryptocurrencies, rebel network states need to learn to
actually execute and build, and not just hold parties and vibe and share memes
comparing modern brutalism to 16th-century European architecture on Twitter.
Zuzalu was in part my own attempt to instigate change in this direction. This
was the first true high-stakes civil war of a "digital nation", and the
experiences carry important lessons for other digital nations that we will be
building in the decades to come.” (Buterin, 2024, p. 10)


“Ethereum's focus on client diversity was born from watching the failures that
arose from Bitcoin having a single client team. Its version of layer 2s was
born from understanding how the limitations of Bitcoin lead to limitations in
what kinds of layer 2s with what trust properties are possible to build on top
of it. More generally, Ethereum's explicit attempt to foster a pluralistic
ecosystem is in large part an attempt at avoiding one-sided competence traps.”
(Buterin, 2024, p. 10)


“I find it a feature of Bitcoin that it's sociologically complex enough that
it can have internal debates and splits that are so rich and fascinating that
you can write two entire books on them.” (Buterin, 2024, p. 9)


“When an ecosystem stops embracing new technology, it inevitably stagnates,
and becomes more contentious at the same time. The development of Inscriptions
and later BitVM have created new possibilities for layer 2s, improving on what
can be done with Lightning. Hopefully, Udi Wertheimer is correct with his
theory that ETH getting an ETF means the death of Saylorism, and a renewed
realization that Bitcoin needs to improve technologically.” (Buterin, 2024, p.
9)


“the word "ZK-SNARK" appeared exactly zero times in both books. There is not
much excuse for this: even by the mid-2010s, ZK-SNARKs and their potential to
revolutionize scalability (and privacy) were well known. Zcash launched in
October 2016. The scalability implications of ZK-SNARKs were explored a little
bit by Gregory Maxwell in 2013, but they did not seem to get taken into
account at all in discussions of Bitcoin's future roadmap. The ultimate
diffuser of political tension is not compromise, but rather new technology:
the discovery of fundamentally new approaches that give both sides more of
what they want at the same time. Justin Drake's push to embrace BLS
aggregation, allowing Ethereum's proof of stake to process many more
validators, and thereby decrease the min staking balance from 1500 to 32, with
quite little downside. More recently, work on signature merging promises to
take this further. EIP-7702, which accomplished the goals of ERC-3074 in a way
that is significantly more forward-compatible with smart contract wallets, and
thereby helped to tone down a long-standing dispute. Multidimensional gas,
starting with its implementation for blobs, has already helped increase
Ethereum's capability to hold rollup data, without increasing the size of
worst-case blocks, and thereby keeping security risks minimized.” (Buterin,
2024, p. 8)


“One side monopolizes all the competent people, but uses its power to push a
narrow and biased perspective; the other side correctly recognizes that
something is wrong, but engulfs itself in a focus on opposition, failing to
develop the technical ability to execute on its own. The big block side
appears to have largely not even realized the need to be competent at
executing - they thought that they could win solely by sheer force of being
right on the block size question. Big blockers ended up paying a heavy price
for their focus on opposing over building in multiple ways: even when they
split off into their own chain with Bitcoin Cash, they ended up splitting in
half two more times before the community finally stabilized.” (Buterin, 2024,
p. 8)


“I found myself agreeing with Ver more often on big-picture questions, but
with Bier more often on individual details. In my view, big blockers were
right on the central question that blocks needed to be bigger, and that it was
best to accomplish this with a clean simple hard fork like Satoshi described,
but small blockers committed far fewer embarrassing technical faux pas, and
had fewer positions that led to absurd outcomes if you tried to take them to
their logical conclusion.” (Buterin, 2024, p. 7)


“many big blockers fell for Craig's antics, because Craig toed the big-block
party line, and said things that the big blockers wanted to hear.” (Buterin,
2024, p. 7)


“Bitcoin Classic was not well-written code, Bitcoin Unlimited was needlessly
overly complicated, for a long time they did not include wipeout protection
and did not seem to understand that this choice greatly hurts their chance of
success (!!), and they had serious security vulnerabilities.” (Buterin, 2024,
p. 7)


“we should balance between increasing the cost of writing to the chain (ie.
transaction fees) and the cost of reading the chain (ie. software requirements
for a node). Ideally, if demand for using a blockchain increases by 100x, we
should split the pain halfway, and let the block size increase by 10x and the
fees increase by 10x (demand elasticity for transaction fees is close enough
to 1 that this kind-of works in practice). Ethereum actually did end up taking
a medium-block approach: the chain's capacity has increased by roughly 5.3x
since it launched in 2015 (perhaps 7x if you count calldata repricings and
blobs), and at the same time fees increased from almost nothing to a
significant-but-not-too-high level. However, this kind of compromise-oriented
(or "concave") approach never caught on with either faction; perhaps it felt
too "central-planny" for one side and too "wishy-washy" for the other. I feel
like big blockers were more at fault than small blockers here; the small
blockers were open to modest block size increases at the beginning (eg. Adam
Back's 2/4/8 plan), and it was big blockers that were unwilling to compromise,
and moved quickly from advocating a single increase to a specific larger
number to advocating an overarching philosophy that pretty much any nontrivial
limitation of the block size is illegitimate.” (Buterin, 2024, p. 6)


“Ver does not focus much on the philosophy of how Bitcoin should be governed,
because to him the answer that "Bitcoin is governed by miners" is satisfying.
This is a place where I agreed with neither side: I found the nebulous
"consensus of users that we refuse to actually define" and the extreme "miners
should control everything because they have aligned incentives" both
unreasonable. At the same time, I remember being immensely frustrated with big
blockers on a few key points, and they were points that Bier's book echoed.
One of the worst (both according to me and according to Bier) was that big
blockers were never willing to agree on any realistic limiting principle for
how big blocks should go. A common viewpoint was that "the block size was set
by the market" - meaning, miners should make blocks as big as they want, and
other miners can choose to accept or reject those blocks. I argued against
this heavily, and pointed out that it's an extreme stretch of the concept of a
"market" to say that such a mechanism is a market. Eventually, when the big
blockers split off into their own independent chain (Bitcoin Cash), they ended
up moving away from this view, and adding a block size limit of 32 MB.”
(Buterin, 2024, p. 5)


“Segregated Witness, the proposal adopted by the small block side to slightly
increase block size, was needlessly overcomplicated, compared to a simple hard
fork block size increase. The small block side ended up adopting a religion of
"soft forks good, hard forks bad" (which I strongly disagreed with), and
designed their approach to increasing the block size to fit this rule, despite
what Bier acknowledges are serious increases in complexity, to the point where
many big blockers were unable to understand the proposal. I felt that small
blockers were not just being "pro-carefulness", they were arbitrarily picking
between different types of carefulness, picking one (no hard forks) at the
expense of another (keeping a clean and simple code and spec) because it fit
their agenda. Eventually, big blockers also ended up throwing away "clean and
simple" and going into ideas like Bitcoin Unlimited's adaptive block size
increase, a decision that Bier (rightfully) rips into them for. The small
block side really was engaging in very uncool acts of social media censorship
to impose their views, culminating in Theymos's infamous line "If 90% of
/r/Bitcoin users find these policies to be intolerable, then I want these 90%
of /r/Bitcoin users to leave." Even relatively mild pro-big-block posts would
frequently get deleted. Custom CSS was used to make these deleted posts
invisible.” (Buterin, 2024, p. 5)


“My sympathy for the big block side centered on a few key points: A key
initial promise of Bitcoin was digital cash, and high fees could kill that use
case. While layer 2 protocols could in theory provide much lower fees, the
whole concept was highly untested, and it was highly irresponsible for the
small blockers to commit to the small-block roadmap given how little they knew
about how well the Lightning Network would work in practice. These days,
practical experience with the Lightning Network has made pessimistic
perspectives much more common. I was not convinced by the small block side's
"meta-level" story. Small blockers would often argue that "Bitcoin should be
controlled by users", and "users don't support big blocks", but were never
willing to pin down any specific way of defining who "users" are or measuring
what they wanted. Big blockers implicitly tried to propose at least three
different ways of counting users: hashpower, public statements by well-known
companies, and social media discourse, and small blockers denounced each one.
Big blockers did not organize the New York Agreement because they liked
"cabals"; they organized the New York Agreement because small blockers
insisted on "consensus" between "users" for any contentious change, and signed
statements from major stakeholders were the only practical approach that the
big blockers saw to try to actually do that.” (Buterin, 2024, p. 4)


“To Bier, the small-block side is standing on behalf of users against small
but powerful cabals of miners and exchanges trying to wrest control of the
chain for their own benefit. Small blocks keep Bitcoin decentralized by making
sure regular users can run nodes and verify the chain. To Ver, the big-block
side is standing on behalf of users against small but powerful cabals of self-
appointed high priests and VC-funded companies (namely, Blockstream) who
profit from building the layer 2 solutions that the small-block roadmap
necessitates. Large blocks keep Bitcoin decentralized by making sure users can
continue to afford on-chain transactions without needing to depend on
centralized layer-2 infrastructure. The closest that I can see to the two
sides even "agreeing on the terms of the debate" is that Bier's book accepts
that many big blockers are well intentioned, even acknowledging that they have
valid grievances regarding pro-small-block forum moderators censoring opposing
views, but frequently criticizes the big block side for being incompetent,
while Ver's book is more willing to ascribe malicious intent and even
conspiracy theories to small blockers, but rarely criticizes their competence.
This echoes a common political trope I have heard on quite a few occasions,
that "the right thinks that the left is naive, the left thinks that the right
is evil".” (Buterin, 2024, p. 3f)


“The big blockers also frequently cite two other things written by Satoshi:
The simplified payment verification section of the whitepaper, which talks
about how once blocks get very big, individual users can verify that their
payments were included using Merkle proofs, without needing to verify the
whole chain. A Bitcointalk quote advocating hard forks to phase in block size
increases” (Buterin, 2024, p. 2)


Vitalik Buterin, “Some Reflections on the Bitcoin Block Size War,” May 31, 2024, https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/05/31/blocksize.html.


Blocksize Wars


my testnote


is there no free market if only psychological factors undermine it?


best advice


these statistic sounds so absurd, if doubt the definition of rape it uses


also there is a grey-scale between push, urge, force,…


at the beginning, every woman is unwilling…


exception: long distance swimming in open water