There's a civil war brewing between those seeking to filter out large data transactions from the Bitcoin chain, and those who want more capacity for data use cases.
Everything boiled over when Peter Todd submitted a pull request to remove certain OP_RETURN data limits.
Ironically, the Bitcoin Core developers, who were on the small block side the last time, are on the "big block side" this time around! 🤣
Why did the first block size war happen? 🤔
It's an endlessly-rehashed story by now, but to summarize: the big block camp wanted to keep using Bitcoin for cheap payments as it had been used up until that point. This necessitated increasing the block size.
The small block camp wanted to keep capacity low so everyone could run a node, and find off-chain scaling solutions. This necessitated keeping the block size small, but adding some modifications, notably Segwit.
In reality, it was pretty apparent that the captains of the small block movement had ulterior business motives behind restricting the block size, because they wanted to sell their own layer-two scaling solutions for untold billions.
In the end, the small block argument won, and Bitcoin has been on that path ever since.
Those same concerns are biting back now 🪃💥
Now, the same conversation is over "big data" vs. "small data": the same narrative the Bitcoin Core team relied on to keep blocks small back in 2017 is making it hard to increase the data limit eight years later.
Not trying to be rude, but there's no avoiding it: the "plebs" fighting for eternally-constricted block sizes are, and always were, useful idiots: they were sold on convoluted arguments about decentralization to be pawns in a war for corporate interests.
Both times Bitcoin was hijacked for corporate interests
In 2017, Blockstream and other second-layer corporations paid off the Core developers and essentially hijacked Bitcoin to create a forced use case for their product.
Now, in 2025, the same general interests are trying to increase the data limit, also so their companies' products can be optimized.
Only this time, they're having to fight the shock troops they recruited for the first block size war.
I moved on from Bitcoin almost a decade ago to work on things that just work as freedom tools.
But every once in a while, it's nice to watch from the sidelines as my decision is once again validated in real time.