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I predict that a client for casual users that stores as little of the chain as possible will be in widespread use at least one full year before the size of the block chain database file grows to the size that would take up 1% of the average (mean) hard drive size of typical home PCs.
Forget home PCs for a second. For bitcoin to go mainstream, we need to be able to pay from our cell phones. Modern (even near future) download speeds can't handle the blockchain size.
The logical end of the reduced block chain idea is a device that keeps none of it locally, possibly not even the headers. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of threads here with ideas on how to do that.
Oh, and I can move 8 gigs into my ancient Palm Treo in about 2 seconds using the SD protocol. Modern phones should be able to do even better.
In the extremely unlikely case they take down the org domain (or, it goes down for some other reason when all the admins are on holiday) you can always use the wiki, which is on an .it domain ...
Why does a simple question like this need to result in a long discussion.
Why does a simple question like this need to result in a long discussion.
I predict that a client for casual users that stores as little of the chain as possible will be in widespread use at least one full year before the size of the block chain database file grows to the size that would take up 1% of the average (mean) hard drive size of typical home PCs.
Forget home PCs for a second. For bitcoin to go mainstream, we need to be able to pay from our cell phones. Modern (even near future) download speeds can't handle the blockchain size.
The weak spot in Bitcoin is the size of the blockchain.
with trimming we only need to store about 30% of the total chain. yes it will get big, but storage sizes will go up with it. 5 years ago 500gb was big, these days 3tb drives are a avalable.
just because it is available does not mean most people have it. most people these days. 31% of steam users have a harddrive from 250-500gigs. although you can see that 750gig+ builds are growing fairly fast. with 1tb+ over 25%
give it 2 years and id guess 1-1.5TB will be around 30% with 2tb+ being 20-25%
I predict that a client for casual users that stores as little of the chain as possible will be in widespread use at least one full year before the size of the block chain database file grows to the size that would take up 1% of the average (mean) hard drive size of typical home PCs.
The weak spot in Bitcoin is the size of the blockchain.
with trimming we only need to store about 30% of the total chain. yes it will get big, but storage sizes will go up with it. 5 years ago 500gb was big, these days 3tb drives are a avalable.
just because it is available does not mean most people have it. most people these days. 31% of steam users have a harddrive from 250-500gigs. although you can see that 750gig+ builds are growing fairly fast. with 1tb+ over 25%
give it 2 years and id guess 1-1.5TB will be around 30% with 2tb+ being 20-25%
The weak spot in Bitcoin is the size of the blockchain.
with trimming we only need to store about 30% of the total chain. yes it will get big, but storage sizes will go up with it. 5 years ago 500gb was big, these days 3tb drives are a avalable.
The internet perceives censorship as damage and routes around it.
The weak spot in Bitcoin is the size of the blockchain.
the biggest issue with namecoins is that right now it is fairly difficult to browse with it. as of now i have never successfully used the namecoin chain directly to browse any webpage. the easiest solution is to use one of the dns servers that does the work for you. however out of the box you can not simply type in namecoinaddress.bit and go to that page. that alone would be enough to stop 99% of any users ever getting to that page, unless you specifically linked an ip address. then you would have all kinds of antivirus/firewall warnings.
even .onion urls are enough to stop 99% of anyone ever trying to find that site.
a real solution would be to diversify and make many mirrors now. some on tor, some with namecoin and some on traditional dns. traditional dns sites should try to get high on good page rank for bitcoin searches.
even .onion urls are enough to stop 99% of anyone ever trying to find that site.
a real solution would be to diversify and make many mirrors now. some on tor, some with namecoin and some on traditional dns. traditional dns sites should try to get high on good page rank for bitcoin searches.
correct me if i am wrong, but i do not think a bitcoin.onion is possible because onion urls are not chosen, they are just generated just like bitcoin addresses. so it would be random chars, but the devs could sign the url so we would know it was run by them.
You are in fact correct. I guess we could register the domain Bitcoin.bit (with namecoins) and then have it point wherever we want.
Wait, I think you're right. Can namecoins be used to reference to an onion address? If so, we just tripped over a major use for namecoins.
correct me if i am wrong, but i do not think a bitcoin.onion is possible because onion urls are not chosen, they are just generated just like bitcoin addresses. so it would be random chars, but the devs could sign the url so we would know it was run by them.
You are in fact correct. I guess we could register the domain Bitcoin.bit (with namecoins) and then have it point wherever we want.
correct me if i am wrong, but i do not think a bitcoin.onion is possible because onion urls are not chosen, they are just generated just like bitcoin addresses. so it would be random chars, but the devs could sign the url so we would know it was run by them.
Note: Just a warning, this is my total noob amateur opinion. If I'm wrong, could you please point out where and why so I can learn 
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Something that's crossed my mind is a possible weak point with Bitcoin.
If for whatever reason, governments or other powerful institutions wanted to see Bitcoin fail, all they'd need to do is strong arm ICANN to take down the bitcoin.org domain name (just like they did with Wikileaks). Then there would be massive disruption to the system.
Even if a myriad of mirror sites sprang up, how could the ordinary user know which was legit or not? Especially when downloading the Bitcoin client, anybody could put up a mirror site with some malware infected files.
I guess what I'm getting at is, is there any plan in place for this type of eventuality?
Cheers,
Crobbo
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Something that's crossed my mind is a possible weak point with Bitcoin.
If for whatever reason, governments or other powerful institutions wanted to see Bitcoin fail, all they'd need to do is strong arm ICANN to take down the bitcoin.org domain name (just like they did with Wikileaks). Then there would be massive disruption to the system.
Even if a myriad of mirror sites sprang up, how could the ordinary user know which was legit or not? Especially when downloading the Bitcoin client, anybody could put up a mirror site with some malware infected files.
I guess what I'm getting at is, is there any plan in place for this type of eventuality?
Cheers,
Crobbo
The only weak point here is between your legs. Settle down.
The US tried to shut down internet gambling companies by seizing the domain names and it didn't work, they just moved to .eu domains instead of .com and it was business as usual. (What did work at shutting them down was freezing the poker site's bank accounts.)
Unfortunately bitcoin.eu is taken, and probably bitcoin.* are all taken. But if the US gov seizes bitcoin.org I'm sure we will switch to something within 24 hrs and it will back to normal, perhaps with a temporary hit to the BTC/USD exchange rate. But if history tells us anything, when the US govt. says some commodity is illegal, then you can bet on the prices going up
Unfortunately bitcoin.eu is taken, and probably bitcoin.* are all taken. But if the US gov seizes bitcoin.org I'm sure we will switch to something within 24 hrs and it will back to normal, perhaps with a temporary hit to the BTC/USD exchange rate. But if history tells us anything, when the US govt. says some commodity is illegal, then you can bet on the prices going up
There is even a kind of failsafe mechanism already implemented in the client via the alert-key. Even if the main communication channels like bitcoin.org, the forums maybe even IRC would be disrupted - it could serve as a kind of last resort announcement system.
If anything really bad happened, a message could be transmitted to all the standard Bitcoin clients to display a message with instructions of how to proceed.
Of course, a possible adversary having the power to control all the usual ways of communication can probably also severely cripple the communication between the Bitcoin nodes.
Apart from that, the only problem is that AFAIK, only Satoshi has the alert-key
If anything really bad happened, a message could be transmitted to all the standard Bitcoin clients to display a message with instructions of how to proceed.
Of course, a possible adversary having the power to control all the usual ways of communication can probably also severely cripple the communication between the Bitcoin nodes.
Apart from that, the only problem is that AFAIK, only Satoshi has the alert-key
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Note: Just a warning, this is my total noob amateur opinion. If I'm wrong, could you please point out where and why so I can learn .
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Something that's crossed my mind is a possible weak point with Bitcoin.
If for whatever reason, governments or other powerful institutions wanted to see Bitcoin fail, all they'd need to do is strong arm ICANN to take down the bitcoin.org domain name (just like they did with Wikileaks). Then there would be massive disruption to the system.
Even if a myriad of mirror sites sprang up, how could the ordinary user know which was legit or not? Especially when downloading the Bitcoin client, anybody could put up a mirror site with some malware infected files.
I guess what I'm getting at is, is there any plan in place for this type of eventuality?
Cheers,
Crobbo
.------------
Something that's crossed my mind is a possible weak point with Bitcoin.
If for whatever reason, governments or other powerful institutions wanted to see Bitcoin fail, all they'd need to do is strong arm ICANN to take down the bitcoin.org domain name (just like they did with Wikileaks). Then there would be massive disruption to the system.
Even if a myriad of mirror sites sprang up, how could the ordinary user know which was legit or not? Especially when downloading the Bitcoin client, anybody could put up a mirror site with some malware infected files.
I guess what I'm getting at is, is there any plan in place for this type of eventuality?
Cheers,
Crobbo
Simple, the devs can distribute a file signed with their private key, then we know the file we receive has not been tampered with and could only have been created by the devs. Combine this with torrents and the client can be distributed without any central site.
Of course if we really had problems hosting it i think Bitcoin.onion would work quite well.
That's a great idea! Maybe there should be something ready now as a failsafe?
Good point bb about social media too. How could we stop the inevitable false information getting through too? I think large governments still have the power to influence the likes of facebook and twitter.
I think for Bitcoin to ever succeed in the mainstream, we'll have to simplify things for the general public, because Average Joe will know squat about Tor and maybe even torrents?
Edit: And sorry for being annoying dude
just want to play devils advocate!If governments are seizing domains and/or creating fake clients, i think they would at least make it illegal first, and Average Joe is a law abiding citizen. If Gov's go after Bitcoin we lose much hope of legitimacy there, and we will just have to take heart in that anyone who wants to will still be able to find the now illegal software.
..........
Note: Just a warning, this is my total noob amateur opinion. If I'm wrong, could you please point out where and why so I can learn .
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Something that's crossed my mind is a possible weak point with Bitcoin.
If for whatever reason, governments or other powerful institutions wanted to see Bitcoin fail, all they'd need to do is strong arm ICANN to take down the bitcoin.org domain name (just like they did with Wikileaks). Then there would be massive disruption to the system.
Even if a myriad of mirror sites sprang up, how could the ordinary user know which was legit or not? Especially when downloading the Bitcoin client, anybody could put up a mirror site with some malware infected files.
I guess what I'm getting at is, is there any plan in place for this type of eventuality?
Cheers,
Crobbo
.------------
Something that's crossed my mind is a possible weak point with Bitcoin.
If for whatever reason, governments or other powerful institutions wanted to see Bitcoin fail, all they'd need to do is strong arm ICANN to take down the bitcoin.org domain name (just like they did with Wikileaks). Then there would be massive disruption to the system.
Even if a myriad of mirror sites sprang up, how could the ordinary user know which was legit or not? Especially when downloading the Bitcoin client, anybody could put up a mirror site with some malware infected files.
I guess what I'm getting at is, is there any plan in place for this type of eventuality?
Cheers,
Crobbo
Simple, the devs can distribute a file signed with their private key, then we know the file we receive has not been tampered with and could only have been created by the devs. Combine this with torrents and the client can be distributed without any central site.
Of course if we really had problems hosting it i think Bitcoin.onion would work quite well.
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