Principles of Bitcoin

All changes and upgrades to the protocol should strive to maintain and reinforce these Principles of Bitcoin

21 million coins.
No censorship: Nobody should be able to prevent valid txs from being confirmed.
Open-Source: Bitcoin source code should always be open for anyone to read, modify, copy, share.
Permissionless: No arbitrary gatekeepers should ever prevent anybody from being part of the network (user, node, miner, etc).
Pseudonymous: No ID should be required to own, use Bitcoin.
Fungible: All coins are equal and should be equally spendable.
Irreversible Transactions: Confirmed blocks should be set in stone. Blockchain History should be immutable.

See Also