Blockchain Books
The Blocksize War
The Battle Over Who Controls Bitcoin's Protocol Rules
Jonathan Bier's blow-by-blow history of Bitcoin's 2015–2017 civil war over block size and protocol governance.
Jonathan Bier's The Blocksize War is the definitive narrative history of the most consequential governance conflict Bitcoin has ever had: the two-year fight over whether to increase the block size limit, what eventually became the SegWit2x / UASF / BCH split. Bier was an active participant on the small-block side and writes from that perspective, but he is unusually careful to lay out the chronology and the arguments from all sides so a reader can form their own judgment.
Who it's for
People who already understand what a Bitcoin block is and want to know why the community spent two years tearing itself apart over the size of one. It will reward anyone who has tried to figure out what the BCH fork was really about, why "UASF" became a rallying cry, or why Bitcoin's most prominent early companies (Coinbase, Bitmain, Blockstream) ended up on opposite sides. Not a beginner book.
What it does well
The chronological structure is the right call. Bier moves week by week through the Hong Kong agreement, the New York Agreement, the failed SegWit2x hard fork, and the BCH split, naming the actors and quoting their public statements as he goes. The chapters on miner signalling and the UASF (BIP148) movement are the clearest explanation of how Bitcoin's social-layer governance actually functions when push comes to shove. The reproduced charts and signalling tables are a useful primary-source archive.
Where it falls short
Bier is honest that he was on one side and writes accordingly. The small-block / SegWit faction comes off as principled and far-sighted; the big-block faction comes off as captured by mining and exchange interests. Some of that is the historical record speaking; some of it is the author's framing. A reader who wants the big-block case made charitably will need to read Roger Ver, Gavin Andresen, and Mike Hearn in their own words alongside this book.
The prose is also functional rather than literary. There are stretches that read like a particularly diligent forum digest. That's a feature for the historical record and a drawback as a reading experience. As a reference text on how Bitcoin governance works in practice it is essentially unmatched.