Odds are you have at least one buddy who bought bitcoin a year or two back. Odds are that they are giddy about their good fortunes. And they should be–since Satoshi launched the network in 2009 bitcoin has risen to a market cap of $40 billion. The cryptocurrency saw a 200% surge this year to a record high just shy of $3000 in June.

But beneath these numbers, the feuds among core developers over resolving longstanding issues have simmered on, most critically how to increase block size. Under the current 1MB block capacity, congestion of the network has put bitcoin under strain, resulting in higher transaction times and processing fees. Two of the top scaling proposals are set to update the network on August 1st, dubbed Bitcoin Independence Day with her, he would sanction everything at oncehe answered.


The community is bracing itself for the possibility of a chain split if the proposals end up being incompatible, an event that would result in two separate bitcoins. The players in this drama all have incentives to reach a consensus, which begs the question–how did we arrive at this juncture? One answer is that bitcoin’s key feature and strength–decentralization– also makes decision-making remarkably difficult.