Topic: Block chain size/storage and slow downloads for new users - page 21. (Read 228658 times)

To make blacklists effective you want a small number of entities holding the blockchain so you can apply them directly there.

Please don't assert things like that if you don't understand the political and social details.

I actually meant to indicate that when a small number of entities have the resources (and freedom) necessary to operate the Bitcoin network infrastructure, it is more possible to enforce the use of all manners of constructs.  This would include any number of types of lists, personal identification mappings, authentications, etc.

I believe that one needs to parse and process the entire blockchain to get the UTXO set, or get it from someone who has, but that it is easily safe to do so (under the current implementation) so it's a moot point and a red herring.

My main point is that it seems to me that if I were running a business in an ordinary manner, I would want the UTXO set and other constraints to grow to what I could comfortably manage but which my lesser competition could not.  My similar sized peers would probably agree.  Between us, we could make the pool of people who's choice of software defines how the system operates a relatively small one.  Of course it would be helpful if users were mostly just running Multibit and such shifts would go largely unnoticed.

Chinese operators who cannot be uniformly pressured by authorities (a-la prism), alt-coins, and general knowledge on the part of the userbase may yet come to the rescue.  Hope so.  If not, my fall-back is, as always, to try to time things such that I get insanely rich off Bitcoin and move on to other more interesting things.

Can anyone tell me what to do

It would make no difference. To propagate colourings/markings of coins, all you need is a UTXO set and to keep up with new blocks. You don't need access to the entire history of the chain.

Please don't assert things like that if you don't understand the technical details.

"mass install a fake one with fake info"
Please read up about proof of work. The existing blockchain can't be faked without an improbable amount of computing power.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_work


This is gloom and doom. The evidence is that the increasing unit value of bitcoin is increasing the number of nodes. Whether they will be persistent for long periods is not known yet, but this uptick (likely driven by the rise from $120 to $800) is very encouraging.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/didnt-dan-kaminsky-say-that-we-were-supposed-to-fail-by-dec-31st-345258

I assume  you've lost some of that hope now.      j/k

Yes, you are probably wrong on this.

As the OP has famously said, Bitcoin could run just fine if only 4 or 5 copies of the blockchain existed.  Presumably it would be large entities who hold these copies and run the 'supernodes' required to process the incoming data and datasets.  He is probably right about this due to the way Bitcoin is designed, and it would certainly make it a lot easier to deploy 'red-listing' or whatever the preferred marketing term is these days.

This is not the evolutionary path I would like to see Bitcoin go down, but I'm just an ordinary user and enthusiast.

But what if so few people start storing the full block chain, that somebody can mass install a fake one with fake info, thus ruining bitcoin?  I'm not sure this is the greatest thing int he world, sorta compromises a system like bitcoin...  It will just cause fewer people to own the complete blockchain...  Am I wrong on this?

So I downloaded bootstrap.dat, 9GB+ from the torrent file on the source page, and I put it on my Bitcoin folder, but it's still so far away from completing the download. Am i doing something wrong? because its still 31 weeks behind.
I think im giving up on qt and i'll ulse Multi, I hope it looks the same now that i learned how to use the default client. Can u encrypt wallet.dat with it and so on?

Everyone who owns a bitcoin has an incentive to see the blockchain replicated and stored, because this has the only acceptable proof of their own holding. Terabyte disk storage is very cheap today and storage continues to get cheaper. The cost of helping ensure network health is the delay in initial synchronization and continued bandwidth requirements. People who don't mine, and just invest, should consider spending a small percentage of their bitcoin holding on hardware and bandwidth.

What I'm trying to understand is how exactly will bitcoin work if everyone starts using bitcon QT with the updated 10gb limit.  What will happen to the old blocks?  Why would anyone store them anymore?  What's the incentive to store a terabyte of blocks (in the future)?  Will this mess up bitcoin?

Anyone who can run the reference software, and leave it running full time, is helping maintain the health of the Bitcoin network. Anyone who doesn't have the hardware, bandwidth, to do so is better off with Multibit or one of the other lightweight wallets. A further advantage of bitcoin-qt is that you can use Armory, the best wallet for securing large holdings. Of course, as the exchange rate increases even small holdings are "large" now  

So you are saying that even if it's not crucial and you could use other clients that do not require you to download the blockchain big ass file, the ideal and most secure scenareo is still using Bitcoin-QT with said big file downloaded and up to date??

Thanks for this Mike. Even though I have been using the BitCoin-QT client for a few months now, I was always wondering how long it would take to download and why all of the blocks were useful.

Hi Def Movies. Bleeding Edge Games. They are all larger than the blockchain. For now.

No.  Maybe a couple of months?

Is there an expected release date for .9?

Thanks and thanks for all the updates... very helpful reading.

This will be solved in version 0.9 of bitcoin-qt with only need to download headers. Downloading entire chain will be optional.

I was not very privacy aware when using bitcoin spinner on my android until a trading partner asked me about my trading history as the one address I had been using for 2 years was showing volumes well beyond my peak holdings in my secure wallet. That was when it dawned on me that whenever I would be out on the street with a loaded wallet, all of these former trade partners would be able to know exactly how well I charged my android wallet. Financial privacy matters. Trust me.

This is true, but we were discussing wallets fairly specifically.  You points about privacy are good ones.  Theft would take the form of a trojaned JS (or whatever) so it is not trivial and a inputs.io style theft would not be very possible.

I only trust what I can afford to lose to anyone.  A service which is demonstrably more complex to exploit will earn more of my trust and I'd potentially maintain a bigger balance there.  I use exclusively on-line wallet these days because the data rate needed to support a full node exceeds my monthly bandwidth allowance and my secure computer does not run Java.  I'd run something like Multibit (albeit with distaste) if I could compile it myself, but even then I'd still prefer an on-line wallet for spending money.  I don't mind hooking up to a low funded on-line wallet with my Android and Windows machines, and I personally am not terribly bothered by privacy issues for a majority of my activities.

I would prefer methods with a privacy focus out of principle.  As the coinjoin and other methods develop I'll support them for political reasons more than anything.