Unit 2 · Level 2 · The scaling problem
Why not just bigger blocks?
Fees too high? Just make blocks bigger: more space, cheaper transactions. Obvious, right? Bitcoin spent 2015 to 2017 tearing itself apart over exactly this. Bigger blocks mean a heavier, faster-growing chain, which means fewer ordinary people can afford to run a full node and check the rules themselves. The 'blocksize war' ended without agreement: in August 2017, the big-block camp split off as Bitcoin Cash, and Bitcoin kept its small blocks.
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What you get asked
What's the hidden cost of much bigger blocks?
A chain that needs a data centre to verify is a chain verified by few. Block size quietly converts scalability into centralization.
Why do cheap, home-run full nodes matter so much?
Remember league 1: don't trust, verify. If verifying requires industrial hardware, 'verify' quietly becomes 'trust whoever owns the hardware'.
Put the Bitcoin blocksize war in order
Both camps wanted Bitcoin to succeed; they disagreed about which corner of the trilemma was sacred. The chain forked over it.
The August 2017 fork that split off over block size created Bitcoin ___.
Bitcoin Cash raised the block size for cheaper payments. Years on, the original small-block Bitcoin remains vastly larger by value and usage.
What's the lasting lesson of the blocksize war?
There was no setting to flip that made Bitcoin fast, cheap AND easy to verify. Every scaling design since is an attempt to dodge that same trap. 🐜
The rest of this unit
Why block space is scarce, and why 'just make blocks bigger' started a war.