Topic: Blockchain size (Read 5429 times)

the solution is simple technically, the blockchain needs to be pruned and a hash of a merkle tree of unspent outputs added to each block.
the only problem is that this requires a hard fork but thats unavoidable anyway once the 1MB block size limit is reached.

If the Blockchain is to be handled by miners or other limited users, then, Bitcoin becomes centralised and open to attack as any centralised entity.  How about Clients only acting on 3 first characters worth of the Blockchain, randomly. IE, My client will only process transactions that begin with 1rP........ If this were hidden from users and done randomly, there'd be no way for anyone to know who was veryfying what portions of the Blockchain  and the blockchain would then itself become decentralised.     So, the idea is, have each client only download transactions that begin  XYZ and will only verify transactions that begin XYZ. It only means that when you send Bitcoin, the transaction sends out a verification request......ahhh, but how does it know where to send the request....It would have to trawl the entire net to find a node that will verify it's XYZ transaction, and so would slow down verification.  And so Ideally, Any node should be able to verify a transaction, but it can't, because it doesn't have the entire blockchain.   So I think I've just painted myself into a corner. What about then, if when you boot up the client it actively seeks out only those nodes which will deal with and verify a XYZ transaction. It might mean a sync delay initially while it finds enough XYZ nodes to verify your transaction but once it's found them, anyway, My thoughts on the Blockchain size problem.   A distributed Blockchain, I'm sure that's what they are working on anyway since it's obvious so I've just wasted 5 minutes of my (and your ) life, sorry about that

Jasun7211 thanks for sharing it with us but as I am a new to bitcoins so I don’t know what is block chain. Can you please tell, what is block chain in simple English? Or at least provide me a link to website that shall help me to learn basic knowledge regarding bitcoins. Thanks in advance 

Pruning can't solve the problem of the blockchain size. In bitcoin network there can be 2100000000000000 active addresses with positive balance of unspent coins.

You're absolutely right, some things must be discussed to death in order to find a reasonable solution. You've made me feel bad for my previous flippant answer. In the open source community consensus is the greatest hurdle to jump and occasionally is more difficult to accomplish than the toughest coding problem. Even well respected coders sometimes have a difficult time getting ideas pushed past the collective because everyone picks apart their ideas instead of helping make those ideas workable. Bitcoin currently has a few flaws that have yet to be worked out. Unfortunately, when you tell this community about Bitcoins problems too many times they become vicious parents that are pissed because their beloved child got a "C" grade in school instead of straight "A's.

There is no workable solution presently that has reached a consensus but here are the solutions presented and some arguments for you to view:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/pruning-in-the-reference-client-ultraprune-mode-91954  Ultraprune

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/mastercoin-new-protocol-layer-starting-from-the-exodus-address-265488  MasterCoin might fix it.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ultimate-blockchain-compression-w-trust-free-lite-nodes-88208.0 Presentation from the Armory Wallet dev.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/scalability-because-its-good-to-have-stretch-goals-159014 Pruning is really a discussion about how well Bitcoin "scales" for future widespread use.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/multibit-43616  https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/electrum-bitcoin-client-for-the-common-users-friendly-and-instant-100502 Thin Clients are a quick fix for frustrated new users.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/huge-increase-in-satoshidice-spam-over-the-past-day-87444 Certain types of businesses make pruning more necessary.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3985415 My own frustration over this very topic.

As you can see it really has been discussed to death but it obviously needs to be discussed until it's fixed.

... in the not so distant future the blockchain will turn from a pure "binary string monster" into an intelligent, distributed key-code datastore using some kind of smart mixture of DHT, Kademlia and enough SHA256 encoding. Then the chain will be as distributed by nature as the bitcoin system itself.

I didn't say "no one is looking at it" did I?  Just the reaction is hostile, with a response ranging from "stop talking about it", through "Moore's law will fix it" to "it'll be fixed when we're ready to fix it".  It feels like a dirty little secret no one is supposed to mention.  And not everyone wants to or is capable of getting involved in the deep technical issues.  The response reminds me of the Linux community and how they respond to user's issues, and after a couple of decades there's less that 2% usage on the desktop.  Maybe the two factors are unrelated, but it certainly doesn't help adoption ostracising those not technically minded.

Really?

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ultimate-blockchain-compression-w-trust-free-lite-nodes-88208
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/pledging-coins-for-ultimate-blockchain-compression-93606
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/fundraising-finish-ultimate-blockchain-compression-204283

I think most people just want to whine and don't want to pitch in to support those who are working on the problem.

Yeah, apparently.  When I first looked at Bitcoin seriously, waiting for hours for the blockchain to download I looked it up and found how large it was, killed the download as it would eat too much of my monthly bandwidth allowance.  That was 9-10 months ago, and the threads on the subject had the same tone then - not a problem, go away noob.  I wonder how many do and stay away?  So here we are, and the same question is being raised and answered in the same fashion.  

I persevered and found Multibit, which is now the "default" suggested, so that's an improvement and the best short answer to the question.  As a community the way this and other technical issues are addressed is poor.  Its a legitimate concern, along with how it will scale especially once the block size limit has to increase to accommodate widespread use.

Don't assume that everybody who posts like a noob actually is genuinely ignorant.

It's always good to do due diligence on somebody who "suddenly" discovers fatal flaws in bitcoin that apparently they think nobody ever noticed before or is already working to correct.

9 times out of 10 they are either already or preparing to pump a scamcoin or some kind of service that can't stand on its own merits, thus they are using FUD to boost adoption beyond what they'd otherwise get.

posting the same question over and over without using search is trolling.

I can't believe how a forum with a noob-prison still has so many noobs running around.

pointing out problems with Bitcoin = trolling?

I feel safe and confident the information presented on this site is accurate and informative.

One average transaction now cost few cents ( 0.00004096 BTC on Eligius mining pool ). Average transaction size is half a kilobyte. One megabyte cost 0.083 BTC, one TB cost 87960.93 BTC and it is just approximately 52,776,558 USD. Finally if you have 1 billion USD and want to spend it on ruining bitcoin you can spam the network with 19TB of data. This will put it on knees if current clients and current hardware were used. And no matter how big limits will be set. No one else would be able to do any cheap transaction through the week or so. This will ruin the price of bitcoin, this will make it cheaper to spam the network and so on. Who can be interested in it? China's government can. Bill Gates can. BitCoin infrastructure isn't actually resistant to evil actions now.

Although it might not solve the actual problem at hand... it does seem very likely that as adoption grows for bitcoin the typical person will be using light wallets or online wallets, especially as there are a lot of advances in those two areas making things both EASIER and SAFER for the end user. If any company out there can find a way to offer insurance on thefts than most regular people would flock to that service imo.

I think that leaves us with a more niche group of "hardcore" bitcoiners who would want something like bitcoin-qt , and or businesses. For those type of people keeping up with HD space typically shouldn't be much of an issue.

Again though that doesnt really solve the problem of size, but I do think a problematic size isn't something the typical bitcoin user will ever have to notice or think about in the future.  I can't imagine my parents sitting around worrying about downloading gig after gig of the blockchain (too confusing for them)  but I could see them using an EASY online or light wallet as more companies/people work on that area.

please read the bitcoin white paper and you will have the exact answer.

but this become a problem when i want to install bitcoin-qt on my local computer, and it has to download the entire block chain. I'd need excess hard disk space just to do that. and in the future, i can only wonder how many GBs of space i'll need just for one cryptocoin's QT client.

People are discussing and implementing solutions instead of trolling here.

http://utxo.tumblr.com

This has been discussed a thousand times and Satoshi thought about this too. How do you mean implemented, you can get a light client that does not download the whole chain.

the solution is clear.. there is no problem..

the 1mb block size (per 10 minutes) calculates as a maximum capacity of 52gb a year. so far in the last near on 5 years blockchain has only accumulated 14.5gb of the nearly 260GB (5 years)of possible space.

so this shows that the blocks are not anywhere near getting filled to even be close to the 52gb a year capacity. and even after 10 years IF every block was filled from now on. that is only half a terrabyte of disk space.

now thats 10 years of full to capacity usage.. so chances are the blockchain may be less.

now i want you to cast your mind back to 10 years ago, where ADSL was only just poping up, and 120gb hard drives were concidered extreme..

nowadays internet speeds are 10meg on average and upto 100meg.. as oppose to the 512k-2mb 10 years ago.

so imagine what would be classed as "standard" in the next decade. we would not think half a terrabyte was very much and the download speed would not be a problem for noobs to get hold of the whole blockchain.

so dont worry about the future, the future will look after itself with technology advances

You actually don't need to whole blockchain locally. When you take a look on the amount of data single companies are handling, not even to mention google, fb, twitter, etc. but let's say discounter sales data in 1000+ stores for every hour, Financial services even today, I could Imagine it will take a loooong time for a blockchain to break the resources needed to be used.

Left with only few services knowing the whole chain and a lot of clients using these services or knowing the last part of the chain will be sufficient.

Where exactly lies you concern? Can you put some numbers in?