Inscription: "Big Blockism's" Emperor's New Clothes
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
Inscription: "Big Blockism's" Emperor's New Clothes
The core issue of inscriptions is still about Bitcoin scaling, which essentially boils down to the debate between large and small blocks.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Mindao
Same recipe, same flavor.
The flames have finally been ignited.
From 2014 to 2017, the Bitcoin community experienced years of intense debate over block size—large versus small. Chinese miners, backed by exchanges, clashed with Bitcoin purists in a life-or-death struggle over protocol direction. Ultimately, the large-block faction lost, leading to splits that created BCH and BSV, while Chinese miners were labeled as "mining overlords."
The leaders of the small-block camp were Adam Back and Greg Maxwell, who later founded Blockstream to develop the Bitcoin sidechain Liquid Network. Hence, there's long been a conspiracy theory within the community: that the Blockstream group deliberately pushed for small blocks and opposed Bitcoin scaling in order to promote their own sidechain, Liquid Network.
Conspiracy theories aside, after all these years, comparing the development of large-block forked chains clearly shows that the small-block proponents had foresight.
In 2023, driven by Chinese retail investors and exchanges, a new wave of "large-block ideology" emerged through inscriptions.
At its core, the inscription issue is still about Bitcoin scalability—essentially, the old debate between large and small blocks.
Inscriptions are certainly market-driven, but Bitcoin is fundamentally a small cup. Creating a tornado inside that cup inevitably squeezes out normal transactions.
I used to be a large-block advocate, believing technology should serve the broadest possible public needs. But I’ve since fully reconciled with the opposing view.
Bitcoin is religion and value storage—it requires extreme conservatism and century-long stability;
Ethereum is progressivism—it thrives on upgrades and rapid iteration;
We don’t need to choose one over the other. Different strokes for different folks. If you enjoy innovation and excitement, go play on Ethereum or its layer-2s. Why not let Bitcoin remain a quiet store of value?
The large vs. small block debate touches on Bitcoin’s identity and scalability—it’s not just a technical disagreement, but fundamentally a clash over “what Bitcoin is.”
If Bitcoin adopts an aggressive, tech-driven large-block path to satisfy every user demand, it must scale without limits—not just for inscriptions, but for everything.
Back in 2013–2015, many projects tried to implement smart contract functionality directly on Bitcoin, aiming to expand its role into a universal smart contract and asset platform. In reality, even with Ethereum’s far more flexible architecture, achieving such scalability remains extremely difficult. Without abandoning Bitcoin’s other core principles, such expansion is technically impossible.
Large-block advocates’ patchwork approach to scaling—moving step by step—is reckless and opportunistic. It’s treating symptoms rather than causes, and fails to solidify Bitcoin’s foundational layer. As an asset platform, Bitcoin doesn’t need to be as flexible as Ethereum; likewise, as a value asset, it shouldn’t be more radical than Ethereum.
So it’s not that Bitcoin lacks grand ambitions. Rather, over the past decade, through trial and error in both technology and narrative, it has found its greatest common denominator—and incidentally “resolved” the scalability dilemma.
How did Bitcoin resolve the scalability problem?
Bitcoin reframed its narrative, repositioning itself as “digital gold” and non-sovereign money. Under this narrative, scalability becomes a non-issue—let Ethereum handle it.
Under the digital gold narrative, TPS (transactions per second) and scalability become “non-problems.” Physical gold turns over less than 1% of its inventory annually. If Bitcoin is a store of value, high-frequency on-chain transactions aren’t necessary—so TPS and scalability cease to matter.
Interestingly, Ethereum’s solution to scalability follows a similar logic: transform the mainnet into a settlement layer (expensive, slow, secure), and offload actual scaling and TPS challenges to Layer 2 solutions.
But here’s the catch: if Bitcoin doesn’t support high TPS and on-chain activity, where will high fees come from? And without high fees, how can network security be maintained after 2140 when all bitcoins are mined? This is the fundamental argument driving large-block advocates toward unlimited scaling.
To be honest, this is indeed Bitcoin’s Achilles’ heel—a problem with no current solution. But since it won’t materialize until 2140, we have time. If Bitcoin reaches a $100 trillion market cap, I believe market forces will drive the emergence of new token models and consensus to solve the “fee problem.”
Small-block proponents may not yet answer the core question—“how to maintain network security with low fees under limited block space once block rewards end”—but the large-block approach to scaling is clearly a direct and devastating threat to Bitcoin’s core value. Unlimited scaling means constant changes and increased technical risks. Even then, large-block advocates still fail to resolve existing scalability constraints, while creating bloated, inefficient systems, greater centralization, and severe technical vulnerabilities—all of which fatally undermine Bitcoin’s role as unbreakable digital gold and permanent value storage.
Between two harms, choose the lesser. In my view, small-block ideology is logically more coherent—leaving the fee issue to future holders a century from now. Large-block scaling, by contrast, offers short-term fixes whose negative impacts are immediate and real.
As a holder, I welcome a vibrant Bitcoin ecosystem. But Bitcoin cannot meet everyone’s needs. Balancing technological limits with human desires is a challenge all holders, traders, miners, and exchanges must confront.
Without a stable, unchanging technical foundation, Bitcoin cannot become the ultimate store of value—and high fees would only be a fleeting illusion.
The inscription debate is merely a minor episode in the larger battle between large- and small-block ideologies. Perhaps technical alternatives can find common ground between the two camps.
Let’s negotiate numbers instead of forking again—that would just be foolish.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
@mindaoyang
