Bitcoin ‘Breakthrough’ Claims Block Size Increase Possible Without Hard Fork

Some dub it a “breakthrough,” others call it a “network attack.”

Those were the prevailing opinions leading up to Mark Friedenbach’s much-anticipated talk at Scaling Bitcoin Friday, where the Blockstream co-founder presented for the first time “Forward Blocks,” a proposal that claims to make future, contentious changes to bitcoin – such as block size increase or proof-of-work change – easier to do.

It’s a big announcement, one that was shrouded in secrecy in the weeks leading up to the event as it challenges core perceptions that are widely held within bitcoin’s community. Chief among them is the assertion that massive changes can be made to bitcoin in a backwards-compatible way, without asking every user to upgrade their software.

One issue – that many bitcoin users use the protocol to achieve a kind of sovereignty over their money, and that mandatory software changes essentially undermine that control – has long loomed over protocol changes, surfacing as a major point…