Flaw which will prevent Bitcoin from ever becoming widespread - page 2.

gadsdengraphics

member

Activity: 88

Merit: 10

Quote from: evoorhees on March 07, 2012, 02:29:19 PM

FAIL.

You think you're the first person to ponder this issue? Roll Eyes

Most users of Bitcoin don't need the blockchain at all, or even to download the client software. Ponder on that for a min.

How so? Are you thinking of physical Bitcoins, or of second-order users who will potential use the Bitcoin network as a transaction protocol, exchanging for state fiat at each end?

gadsdengraphics

member

Activity: 88

Merit: 10

This is on purpose, though there has been discussion in the past about truncating the blockchain. I don't think it will happen.

There are other ways, like a hybrid client/server model. Bitcoin Spinner, the Android app I use for my active wallet, uses a method like this. BCCAPI is one implementation of this, and there is another open-source alternative whose name escapes me at the moment.

Basically, this architecture allows a server to manage the Bitcoin blockchain. The user's public key is handed to the server, which then responds with balance and pending transaction information.

To send money, the client requests a new transaction from the server. The server sends it to the client, the client signs it with it's private key, and the signed transaction is sent back to the server for network inclusion.

It's fast, secure, and does not require the client to download the whole blocks. Desktop clients are possible, though I've not seen one. Perhaps one day, one could make money by hosting a relay server in exchange for a modest monthly fee.

evoorhees

legendary

Activity: 1008

Merit: 1023

Democracy is the original 51% attack

FAIL.

You think you're the first person to ponder this issue? Roll Eyes

Most users of Bitcoin don't need the blockchain at all, or even to download the client software. Ponder on that for a min.

cfiziksh

newbie

Activity: 11

Merit: 0

There is a major flaw which will prevent Bitcoin from ever going into widespread use, which is that you must download all previous transactions since the beginning of time to even start using Bitcoin.

Right now the block chain is already a couple of GB and takes more than a day to download and verify on even a fast connection, but what happens if Bitcoin handles a significant fraction of even the US transactions, let alone the world transactions? The block chain becomes what? several hundred TB long and takes over a lifetime to download? and grows linearly with time?

This program has been reviewed by hundreds, if not thousands of developers, and they all though it was perfectly acceptable to use an algorithm that scales O(N) with the number of transactions since the beginning of time? WTF?!? Shocked

Topic: Flaw which will prevent Bitcoin from ever becoming widespread - page 2. (Read 1933 times)