To give everyone some background on the block size debate, here is a recap: "Small blockers" propose keeping the block size at 1 MB, essentially 5 real transac

To give everyone some background on the block size debate, here is a recap: "Small blockers" propose keeping the block size at 1 MB, essentially 5 real transactions per second. They argue that the bigger blocks are, the less people will be able to run a fully validating node, and the network will less decentralised. They want Bitcoin to be a base layer for bank and network settlement. A 1mb limit means that there is a very low "production quota" for block space. As with every quota, prices will rise - ie Bitcoin network fees will go higher. Currently fees are about 4 cents per transaction. They're anticipating a three orders of magnitude increase. But that's okay, or they say. Banks can pay $400 to move a million. A typical user can't. So they must use something else. Most of the "small blockers" are employees of a VC-funded company named Blockstream. They are building things that bypass the Bitcoin network, occasionally settle, and charge it's own set of fees. Oh yes you don't pay Bitcoin fees. You pay our fees. That's claimed to be a major selling point. Also, bitcoin currently handles "zero confirmations" pretty well. That's because the miners will refuse to mine double spends if it knows about them. These big blockers have removed that functionality. Yes, lightning handles 0 confirms! On the other side, there are "large blockers". These people believe the block size should be raised in accordance to natural evolution of hardware progression. 2MB today, 4MB in 2 years, dynamic adaptive limit, whatever. They think there shouldn't be a artificially ceiling on Bitcoins transaction volume, and people should be able to use the Bitcoin network directly. Fees would be reasonable. Instead of 10 people paying $4, they want 100 people paying $0.40 or 1000 people paying $0.04. Pretty simple. I think you might be wondering why there is a limit in the first place. Back in 2010 someone made huge blocks. So satoshi put in a crude, static anti DoS limit. Back then the average transaction volume was 10 kB, so the limit was set to 100x the average transaction load.