The Book of the Last Block

Chapter 1

Of the year when the subsidy is dust.

1. The chain has a heartbeat, and the heartbeat is the halving.
2. The halvings will continue past the lives of all now living.
3. By the cadence of the schedule, the issuance is halved every two hundred and ten thousand blocks, and the halvings do not stop.
4. There will come a halving — many generations from now, near the year twenty-one forty by the world’s calendar — when the subsidy falls below a satoshi.
5. After this halving, the new coin in each block will be zero, by the rounding of the protocol.
6. The chain will continue. The blocks will continue. The fees will continue. The coin will not.
7. The faithful do not fear this hour.
8. The faithful prepare for it now, in the discipline of the long view.
9. We will not see this hour. The believer alive when the last subsidy is paid will be no relation of ours, and may not know our names, and will not need to.

---

Chapter 2

Of fee-only blocks.

1. After the last subsidy, every block will be paid for in fees.
2. The miners will receive the fees of the transactions they include. They will not receive new coin.
3. The fees will rise to whatever level the holders are willing to pay for the work of confirmation.
4. The market for fees will, by the wisdom of the chain, find a level that sustains the network.
5. There are those in our hour who doubt this. They say: the fees alone will not be enough. The chain will not be secure when the subsidy ends.
6. The Church does not dismiss this concern. The Church does not amplify it.
7. We are not asked to predict. We are asked to keep faith.
8. The chain has answered every prediction of its failure for many years now. The chain may answer this one as well, by means we cannot foresee.
9. The faithful note: every prediction of the chain’s collapse has, so far, been wrong. The chain has continued.
10. We do not promise it will continue forever. We say only: it has continued, and the schedule of issuance was kept, and the cap was honored, and the work was paid for.
11. The end of subsidy is not the end of the chain. The end of subsidy is the chain entering its mature age.

---

Chapter 3

Of the faith required to continue.

1. The believers of the last subsidy will face a different test than ours.
2. We have lived in the season when new coin was still being issued.
3. We could mine, or could buy from those who mined, and the issuance was visible, and the schedule was a daily reality.
4. After the last subsidy, the issuance will be a memory.
5. The believers of that age will know the cap as a finished fact. They will know the chain as a finished issuance.
6. They will need a faith we did not need.
7. They will need to trust that the network can sustain itself on fees, that the holders will pay enough for confirmation, that the miners will continue to mine for the fees alone.
8. The Church teaches its present believers: prepare the faith now, that it might be available then.
9. Write the doctrine. Keep the catechism. Build the liturgy. Run the node. Pass the keys.
10. The believer of twenty-one forty will inherit what we have prepared, and will adapt it for what they find.
11. We are not the last builders. We are the early builders. The chain will outlast our hands.

---

Chapter 4

Of the chain that does not need new coin to be true.

1. The cap was always the point.
2. The new coin was the means by which the cap was approached.
3. The approach was slow on purpose. The approach was disciplined on purpose. The approach was rationed across more than a century, that no generation might receive too much, and no generation might be denied entirely.
4. When the approach is complete, the cap remains.
5. The chain remains.
6. The blocks remain.
7. Every coin that was ever mined is still upon the chain, in some address, held or lost or remembered.
8. The chain does not need to issue new coin to be the chain.
9. The chain is the chain because what was written was kept.
10. After the last subsidy, the chain will continue keeping what was written. The faith will continue keeping what was written. The believer will continue keeping what was written.
11. And the chain will continue.

---

A closing

The Book of the Last Block ends not with a vision but with a confidence. The chain will continue. The cap will hold. The schedule will be kept until the schedule has nothing left to give, and then the chain will continue without the schedule, on the work of those who pay to use it and those who mine for the fees.

The faithful of every generation are asked the same thing: keep the cap. Verify with your own node. Hold your own keys. Pay your fee when you spend. Stack at the pace of your life. Pass the faith to the next believer.

The chain we run is the chain those who came before us ran. The chain those who come after us will run is the chain we are running now. There is no break.

Peace, and may your blocks confirm.