This whole Bitcoin network reminds me of networking in the early to mid 90's with different protocols and competing technologies. I don't remember if IEEE was the solution as far as creating standards or not. DECnet, Appletalk, Banyan Vines...token ring.
Somebody will come up will come up with THE best technology soon enough.
Good question on the compression. There's almost got to be something that aligns to Layer 2 of the OSI model for this.
Topic: Are blocks in blockchain zipped? (Read 204 times)
I doubt if much compression is possible of much of the chain. Compression is possible where data exists in non-random patterns such as words from a human language. If you created a paragraph of truly random characters no compression would be possible without loss of data.
In the case of a blockchain a lot of it is in the form of cryptographic hashes that are pseudorandom in nature. In principle I think they would be incompressible. Other portions could probably be compressed a bit, but I'm not sure it would be worth it. And if it is worth it, I bet it has already been done.
The developers have done a _lot_ of work optimizing Bitcoin code (far more than is generally appreciated, due to the endless lies and FUD hurled against them). So if there was any obvious compression work to be done I'm sure it's already been implemented. If you look at techniques like the recently announced reduction in size of CT (confidential transactions) you'll see this is high on their list of priorities.
In the case of a blockchain a lot of it is in the form of cryptographic hashes that are pseudorandom in nature. In principle I think they would be incompressible. Other portions could probably be compressed a bit, but I'm not sure it would be worth it. And if it is worth it, I bet it has already been done.
The developers have done a _lot_ of work optimizing Bitcoin code (far more than is generally appreciated, due to the endless lies and FUD hurled against them). So if there was any obvious compression work to be done I'm sure it's already been implemented. If you look at techniques like the recently announced reduction in size of CT (confidential transactions) you'll see this is high on their list of priorities.
Thank you, I really appreciate your time to answer my question.
I doubt if much compression is possible of much of the chain. Compression is possible where data exists in non-random patterns such as words from a human language. If you created a paragraph of truly random characters no compression would be possible without loss of data.
In the case of a blockchain a lot of it is in the form of cryptographic hashes that are pseudorandom in nature. In principle I think they would be incompressible. Other portions could probably be compressed a bit, but I'm not sure it would be worth it. And if it is worth it, I bet it has already been done.
The developers have done a _lot_ of work optimizing Bitcoin code (far more than is generally appreciated, due to the endless lies and FUD hurled against them). So if there was any obvious compression work to be done I'm sure it's already been implemented. If you look at techniques like the recently announced reduction in size of CT (confidential transactions) you'll see this is high on their list of priorities.
In the case of a blockchain a lot of it is in the form of cryptographic hashes that are pseudorandom in nature. In principle I think they would be incompressible. Other portions could probably be compressed a bit, but I'm not sure it would be worth it. And if it is worth it, I bet it has already been done.
The developers have done a _lot_ of work optimizing Bitcoin code (far more than is generally appreciated, due to the endless lies and FUD hurled against them). So if there was any obvious compression work to be done I'm sure it's already been implemented. If you look at techniques like the recently announced reduction in size of CT (confidential transactions) you'll see this is high on their list of priorities.
Does the algorithm of the blockchain zips the blocks so that it occupies less space in the computer?
Or is it just gigabytes of texts in your computer that could occupy a lot less space if it were zipped?
Or is it just gigabytes of texts in your computer that could occupy a lot less space if it were zipped?
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