Topic: Full relay : cost and benefits - page 2. (Read 374 times)

You need security for your funds, but it's less important if you only run a node to support the network. If it gets compromised, nothing is lost.

That would only be useful in places with limited internet access, and for those places, downloading up to 0.5 GB per day just to keep the node updated may be too much already.

It goes hand in hand though: if Bitcoin blocks would be an order of magnitude larger, transactions would be cheap for a while, but the required storage would grow much faster.

currently storing 14 years of international currency and the next 4years+ requires


the real concern is not storage cost

the cost to store YEARS of data become pennies per day
however if it costs dollars just to make a transaction. people wont want to use the network daily thus wont want to run a node on the network

transaction cost per daily use is more important factor than blockchain storage cost per decade

do the math
if you can by 1tb storage for say $100 knowing you might need to upgrade every 8 years.. (lets use 5 for convenience)
thats $0.06 a day

compare that to doing 1 transaction per day at $2 to warrant having a PC on each day.
the cost of using bitcoin is over 30x more then the cost of storing bitcoins blockchain

so concentrate on debates about bringing the cost of using bitcoin down becasue the cost of storing bitcoin is not unmanageable

One of the options I have considered in the past is to find a way to distribute the original/full copy of the Bitcoin blockchain on cheap storage devices for offline sharing worldwide. People can just buy or get them for free, install on their computers and join the Bitcoin Network. But I think it would be necessary for the offline copies to be verified as authentic before they are allowed to become part of the Network. Maybe hashing the full copy of the Blockchain and verifying the hash, or/and resyncing would solve this.


Edit: every community, town, city allover the World could do well to have atleast 2 or 3 persons or node runners who can afford to run a fully synced Bitcoin chain on daily basis . These persons can serve as main Blockchain file distributors/sharers, transaction verifiers etc, for the rest of the Community without full nodes

Full nodes are major contributors to the BTC network, contributing to the safety and efficiency of the network is incentivizing already. There are other advantages to running a full node, like full 'independence' and privacy; you can validate transactions locally and you don't have to connect to third party servers. If the incentives you are looking for is through earning, there is none, but you can always buy mining gears and try competing for blocks.

Running full Node doesn't give any incentives like mining and also it has been discussed in the past about incentivizing full node operators but implementing such changes would require careful consideration to avoid unintended consequences. So all the nodes running are driven in the sense of contributing to the network.

But having your own full node gives you complete privacy, and mitigates the reliance on someone's information.

Alternatively, you can find ways to run nodes in the most efficient ways and already an idea proposed by @n0nce

[Guide] How to run a Bitcoin Core full node for under 50 bucks!

Good day all,

Maintaining the entire blockchain ledger and running a full relay by general public is a crucial, foundational aspect of BTC. It's also a substantial commitment in storage, bandwidth and increased need for security. While IMHO those who can, should do it as a public service, there's also a possibility of network somehow compensating those who maintain full ledger. I wonder if this has ever been pondered : can it be done in a way that would incentivize it for individual, independent users vs corporate agents with quasi-unlimited resources ? What are the downsides and upsides beyond obvious ? What does the future hold - what will full ledger look like in a decade from now and how viable will it be then for Joe Internet to keep it on his home network ? Has anyone considered a compression algo that would specialize in good blockchain performance ?

Currently (2023) full ledger is about 435 Gb.  Bandwidth consumption of 200G/month in UPLOADS is reported norm, if left unchecked. I feel a systemic risk to the network that may drift momentum towards large users with unlimited storage and bandwidth in a way that may jeopardize security and decentralized nature of the network.

On other hand, how critical is most of that data to stability and security of the blockchain ? Perhaps my concerns are out of ignorance and it will do just fine when less then 0.01% of all self-hosted nodes maintain a full copy.

With respect
unixux