I read this book a while ago. I just recommended it to someone else in https://stacker.news/items/475160.
As I did, I wondered if ever there has been a review of this book on SN, and there does not seem to be. As I was not around before the Blocksize Wars, I am not a good person to do so. I only know of that time what I read in the book.
My review would be: great book, learned a lot, captivating story-telling, etc. I really enjoyed this book that gave me insights into the dynamics of Bitcoin, how miners, node runners, bitcoin core, etc all have their important and complementary roles to play.
However, what I am wondering is, with this post, if any OG is around here, do you agree with the way this part of Bitcoin's history is told in the book? This book has become a reference, and as we say, history is written by the winner, so the book is obviously biased towards the small blockers.
Small blockers rightfully won, in my opinion, but what do you think? Did Jonathan Bier do a good job at telling the story the way you remember it happening? I know @DarthCoin does not like to be tagged or seen as someone special, but he's one of the few vocal OGs that I've seen here on SN, so I'll make an exception for once, forgive me for doing so. Maybe @jimmysong, but I have not really seen him engage other than post his occasional musings? Or some other OG who has been around before 2017? I'm sure you must have some interesting stories to share related to these events...
Or can anyone recommend other competing references on what happened during those times? I could go through all the mailing lists of course, but summaries are always interesting before diving into the details.
Also sometimes it's super valuable to mix up things for a week or so. Often there's a lot to learn from. What if ekzyis does all chatting with users for a week instead?
I have the copy that I read (and flipped my worldview upside down) framed, hanging on the wall of my office.
It'll be beauty data centers or warehouses
I agree with most of your assessment, good write up.
The main problem though is there's a difference between trust and custodial and you use them interchangeably.
Lightning is trusted in certain ways, but it does not make it custodial. Trust is all around us. I trust my counterparties to not go offline, otherwise I wasted channel fees on them. It does not make them a custodian.
I also trust them to not attempt to do a F&L on me, and part of that trust is assuming my node is not cost worthy to attack. That attack costs more than my node is worth. I also know most of my channel partners.
I also trust that bitcoin's censorship resistant property holds up rather well and that sustaining a 51% is highly unlikely (we all trust that, otherwise none of us would be here).
I'll take this time to share one of the essays from @wefofficial : https://trustisascalingsolution.com/trusted-third-parties
None of these imply custodianship, but trust is a real part of that. It's fair to call something TTP but not custodial. But I agree he's bringing up highly unlikely attacks to promote whatever his thing is. Which I still don't know because he spent most of the article talking about hypothetical LN attacks.