With BIP 119 on the table, it seems to be that season where we debate contentious software updates to the bitcoin protocol, so things can get nasty. But how nasty can things get?
The Bitcoin Improvement Proposals process is the informal procedure of how updates get pushed through the bitcoin protocol without a centralized leader. It's a remarkable achievement of decentralized governance, but how is it governed? If it's not a democracy and it's not a meritocracy, then what is it? How does it reach consensus? Well, it's more like whoever shows up to participate gets to decide what is consensus. In order to have a say on the bitcoin protocol, you must run a node with the version of software you choose to support.
That's where the issues arise. Less than 1% of all bitcoin users operate a node. 99 percent of bitcoiners are simply casual bitcoiners with coins in their Coinbase accounts who are completely disengaged from the discussion. Do their perspectives still matter if they aren't operating a node? That's an intriguing question, but bitcoin would argue that their view doesn't matter. In retrospect, the blocksize wars were primarily a propaganda marketing operation by Calvin Ayre and Ver that pitted the casual 99 percent of bitcoiners against the technical 1 percent, resulting in a hardfork when some of the 99 percent became node runners.
Anyone who remembers the blocksize battles will tell you that they were brutal. But what if I told you the next battle will be ten times worse? I believe that there is a scalability challenge with decentralized governance: the fewer individuals who participate in governance, the easier the disputes get resolved. However, as engagement in governance grows, so does disagreement and dispute.
It's hard to get a good number of how many bitcoiners there are out there, but here's a stat for you: there are more Verified KYC'd Coinbase users than people who voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Given that stat, I'd say that that there are at least 100,000,000+ Bitcoiners in this world.
If you want to see a test run of how nasty a 100,000,000 community war can get, look no further than the PewDiePie vs T-Series war. There was about a half dozen of high profile hacks, tens of millions of dollars people spent on advertising campaigns, hundreds of crazy publicity stunts from influencers (including Elon Musk, can't have an internet war without Elon), and most notably a livestreamed terrorist attack where 50 people were shot and killed
It's easy to dismiss PewDiePie vs T-Series war as just some e-celeb drama and maybe it was. But regardless of the substance of the war, it might be a good predictor to how future bitcoin wars will unfold. Our community has grown so large you will have activism on a scale that will make the blocksize wars look like nothing
It's relevant because there are hundreds of millions of "bitcoiners" out there who are low information, easy to manipulate, and aren't technically running nodes. They will feel powerless in this debate over the protocol and charismatic leaders can make them feel victimized. The internet debates historically have been nasty, but now the bitcoin community has gotten so large this will inevitably escalate to real world demonstrations, violence, etc....
And I think there's no prime location for violence than El Salvador. There were already large demonstrations (large in proportion to El Salvador's tiny population) when Bukele first enacted the Bitcoin law, I imagine it would be very easy for a Chris Larsen type to ignite riots over there in order to change the bitcoin protocol.
The size and scale in which the "bitcoin community" has grown into, this outcome to me seems inevitable. I just imagine it will be much worse because people's money is invested in the outcome of whatever happens, so that means people will be far more emotionally invested in such a war.
TLDR: If there's anything I want you to take from this post: run a node. Become involved so you aren't surprised if a small group of node runners comes to consensus and makes unpopular rules for the majority.
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