Topic: Is the Bitcoin Block Chain too big? - page 2. (Read 7194 times)
exactly hard drive sizes will get bigger over time
Wanted to install bitcoin-qt with a computer with 8GB left. Realised it don't have that much space. Got my New computer and it have been syncronizing for a day now. Any idea how long will it take?
Depends on your download speeds and the upload speeds of your peers.
Wanted to install bitcoin-qt with a computer with 8GB left. Realised it don't have that much space. Got my New computer and it have been syncronizing for a day now. Any idea how long will it take?
mine takes a couple of hours. i use imdisk to create a 16gb ram drive and then run it off of that
Wanted to install bitcoin-qt with a computer with 8GB left. Realised it don't have that much space. Got my New computer and it have been syncronizing for a day now. Any idea how long will it take?
Just for the fun I started again bitcoinqt on a laptop i haven't used in a while.
It says 31525 blocks remaining , I wonder how long it will take.
It says 31525 blocks remaining , I wonder how long it will take.
41 remaining , it took almost 1 day to synchronize after ~100 days offline.
Im actually impressed that bitcoin has worked so well from start, and will work well for several years.
My point is that we must be proactive and change the protocol now before it becomes to big.
Remember that the userbase of popular trends grows exponentially - not linear. So when the userbase and transactions goes up to the sky the infrastructure must be prepared for that success.
or yet alone in this last 6 month period. My point is that we must be proactive and change the protocol now before it becomes to big.
Remember that the userbase of popular trends grows exponentially - not linear. So when the userbase and transactions goes up to the sky the infrastructure must be prepared for that success.
Im actually impressed that bitcoin has worked so well from start, and will work well for several years.
My point is that we must be proactive and change the protocol now before it becomes to big.
Remember that the userbase of popular trends grows exponentially - not linear. So when the userbase and transactions goes up to the sky the infrastructure must be prepared for that success.
My point is that we must be proactive and change the protocol now before it becomes to big.
Remember that the userbase of popular trends grows exponentially - not linear. So when the userbase and transactions goes up to the sky the infrastructure must be prepared for that success.
It's not that long,yet.
SSD are subject to Moore's law. The blockchain is growing slower than Moore's law.
Get rid of block size limit and blockchain will start growing faster than Moore's law. Mass adoption and 1 Mb limit are incompatible each to other. The best we can do is to find Equilibrium.
Not on any decade long scale. In the short term we may grow faster than that BUT the current transaction volume is a tiny fraction of what current hardware can handle so there is a "cushion" built in. We could increase tx volume by a factor of 20x and not be limited by hardware. So if we grow at double (or triple) Moore's law for a couple years it simply eats into that cushion. There is no scenario where Bitcoin growth can exceed Moore's law on a multi-decade timeline, there are only so many humans on the planet.
In 30, 40, 50 years, the discussion of not enough GBs look as silly as saying "video games will never take off because it in the future they will require thousands of floppy disks". I bought a 1 GB drive for $300 in 1995. That would be $300,000 per TB, and in less than 20 years the cost to store 1 TB has fallen to $50. In 20, 30 years I fully expect the cost to store 1 PB to be <$300. This isn't ancient history we are talking about just the effect of Moore's law in a single lifetime.
However in the long run most users will use SPV clients. The security of the network doesn't require 100% of users running a full node, just that a critical mass continues to do so. Between merchants, , developers, exchanges, service providers, hobbyists, and just die hards who refuse anything less than an equal peer on the network I don't see it being an issue.
OK. U r Satoshi, so u know that better than anyone else.
SSD are subject to Moore's law. The blockchain is growing slower than Moore's law.
Get rid of block size limit and blockchain will start growing faster than Moore's law. Mass adoption and 1 Mb limit are incompatible each to other. The best we can do is to find Equilibrium.
Not on any decade long scale. In the short term we may grow faster than that BUT the current transaction volume is a tiny fraction of what current hardware can handle so there is a "cushion" built in. We could increase tx volume by a factor of 20x and not be limited by hardware. So if we grow at double (or triple) Moore's law for a couple years it simply eats into that cushion. There is no scenario where Bitcoin growth can exceed Moore's law on a multi-decade timeline, there are only so many humans on the planet.
In 30, 40, 50 years, the discussion of not enough GBs look as silly as saying "video games will never take off because it in the future they will require thousands of floppy disks". I bought a 1 GB drive for $300 in 1995. That would be $300,000 per TB, and in less than 20 years the cost to store 1 TB has fallen to $50. In 20, 30 years I fully expect the cost to store 1 PB to be <$300. This isn't ancient history we are talking about just the effect of Moore's law in a single lifetime.
However in the long run most users will use SPV clients. The security of the network doesn't require 100% of users running a full node, just that a critical mass continues to do so. Between merchants, , developers, exchanges, service providers, hobbyists, and just die hards who refuse anything less than an equal peer on the network I don't see it being an issue.
Most people use laptops with SSD, and cant afford to have a blockchain size of 40 GB or bigger.. that consumes 1/3 or 1/6 of their SSD size.
If we want a truly decentralized network, nobody should be excluded. The solution is therefore to make the blockchain dynamic and small instead of one gigantic mirror on every HDD in the network.
That's a very bold claim, that most people use laptops with SSD. I for one do not know any of them.If we want a truly decentralized network, nobody should be excluded. The solution is therefore to make the blockchain dynamic and small instead of one gigantic mirror on every HDD in the network.
I agree that the thing to do is to make a lightweight version of the blockchain that would contain only current spendable transaction outputs. But anyone willing to host the full blockchain should have the means to do so.
Heavy desktops will become a minority among households, so if we care about decentralization we must consider what kind of clients most people will be using within a few years.
When people need terrabyte storage they buy USB-drives or NAS-drives - which are useless to host the bitcoin client.
Still waiting for your follow-up on the other thread there, gollum. Thanks.
Are there even any full clients available for iPad?
For my case, I am happily running the full Bitcoin-Qt on my laptop. With the blockchain on its single internal SSD. I don't know what the heck your problem is.
SSD GiB/$ increases by a factor of 2x every eight months or so. Even if someone is too obstinate to not buy enough storage for their imagined needs today, Moore's postulate ensures that they will soon be able to. Probably not even be able to find a drive small enough to present a problem. Seen any 10 GiB drives for sale lately?
SSD are subject to Moore's law. The blockchain is growing slower than Moore's law.
Get rid of block size limit and blockchain will start growing faster than Moore's law. Mass adoption and 1 Mb limit are incompatible each to other. The best we can do is to find Equilibrium.
SSD are subject to Moore's law. The blockchain is growing slower than Moore's law. The "SSD issue" is not an issue. When the blockchain is 1 TB your laptop will have a 20 TB SSD and it will only cost $159.99 (the SSD not the laptop).
Most people use laptops with SSD, and cant afford to have a blockchain size of 40 GB or bigger.. that consumes 1/3 or 1/6 of their SSD size.
If we want a truly decentralized network, nobody should be excluded. The solution is therefore to make the blockchain dynamic and small instead of one gigantic mirror on every HDD in the network.
That's a very bold claim, that most people use laptops with SSD. I for one do not know any of them.If we want a truly decentralized network, nobody should be excluded. The solution is therefore to make the blockchain dynamic and small instead of one gigantic mirror on every HDD in the network.
I agree that the thing to do is to make a lightweight version of the blockchain that would contain only current spendable transaction outputs. But anyone willing to host the full blockchain should have the means to do so.
I have a SSD in both my laptops, my brother has SSD's in his laptop, My boss uses SSD's in every laptop issued by our company. SSD's are everywhere.
All my friends at uni have SSD's in their laptops, my parents and girlfriends parents that have no idea about computers now have ssd's (Without us being an influence on their purchase) and even desktops are being sold with ssd as default these-days.
Most people use laptops with SSD, and cant afford to have a blockchain size of 40 GB or bigger.. that consumes 1/3 or 1/6 of their SSD size.
If we want a truly decentralized network, nobody should be excluded. The solution is therefore to make the blockchain dynamic and small instead of one gigantic mirror on every HDD in the network.
That's a very bold claim, that most people use laptops with SSD. I for one do not know any of them.If we want a truly decentralized network, nobody should be excluded. The solution is therefore to make the blockchain dynamic and small instead of one gigantic mirror on every HDD in the network.
I agree that the thing to do is to make a lightweight version of the blockchain that would contain only current spendable transaction outputs. But anyone willing to host the full blockchain should have the means to do so.
I have a SSD in both my laptops, my brother has SSD's in his laptop, My boss uses SSD's in every laptop issued by our company. SSD's are everywhere.
With a max of 1mb per block the blockchain should not be able to grow faster than 52GB/year.
That is true, but the max block size will eventually need to be increased if bitcoin is support the growing level of transaction rates. So there are two options 1) cap the transaction rate and thus cap the blockchain growth rate or 2) increase the max block size and deal with an exponential growth in blockchain size. Neither option is ideal, the best way is to design the blockchain in such a way that it is dynamic and old blocks can be easily discarded from the chain but at the same time the account balances remain verifiable.I completely agree with you.
1) make the chain dynamic like you say, but also...
2) we need to be able to distribute nodes. Even if we get the size down the real time transaction amount may become very large (Imagine several thousand tx/sec). In this case a distributed node where you connect into a node cluster depending on your resources. So an average computer that wants to participate can connect to a swarm of 10,000 other similar computers and they all become one node. In this manner us little guys can still verify blocks even they are incomming fast.
3) also I think we need to move away from giant blocks and to smaller faster blocks. The block reward can be split too (Although in the long run this does not matter as tx fees will pay for the network). So imagine that hundreds of 500kb blocks confirm every minute, and as those blocks get old (past depth:1,000) they start to get compressed and merged and eventually deleted (back to your dynamic blockchain idea)
The current method where all client and miners download all the blockchain is not sustainable.
I like the idea of super nodes or "clusters", but aren't mining pools essentially the same thing? And I agree with your last point about fast blocks but the problem is that if you make the block rate too fast it can cause a large number of orphaned blocks and other problems. Anything less than 1 minute seems to be a bit too fast imo, but I think the 10 minute block rate of bitcoin is a bit too slow. I think there is a natural balance between too fast and too slow, something close to 2 minutes is optimal imo.
With a max of 1mb per block the blockchain should not be able to grow faster than 52GB/year.
That is true, but the max block size will eventually need to be increased if bitcoin is support the growing level of transaction rates. So there are two options 1) cap the transaction rate and thus cap the blockchain growth rate or 2) increase the max block size and deal with an exponential growth in blockchain size. Neither option is ideal, the best way is to design the blockchain in such a way that it is dynamic and old blocks can be easily discarded from the chain but at the same time the account balances remain verifiable.I completely agree with you.
1) make the chain dynamic like you say, but also...
2) we need to be able to distribute nodes. Even if we get the size down the real time transaction amount may become very large (Imagine several thousand tx/sec). In this case a distributed node where you connect into a node cluster depending on your resources. So an average computer that wants to participate can connect to a swarm of 10,000 other similar computers and they all become one node. In this manner us little guys can still verify blocks even they are incomming fast.
3) also I think we need to move away from giant blocks and to smaller faster blocks. The block reward can be split too (Although in the long run this does not matter as tx fees will pay for the network). So imagine that hundreds of 500kb blocks confirm every minute, and as those blocks get old (past depth:1,000) they start to get compressed and merged and eventually deleted (back to your dynamic blockchain idea)
With a max of 1mb per block the blockchain should not be able to grow faster than 52GB/year.
That is true, but the max block size will eventually need to be increased if bitcoin is to support the growing level of transaction rates. So there are two options 1) cap the transaction rate and thus cap the blockchain growth rate or 2) increase the max block size and deal with an exponential growth in blockchain size. Neither option is ideal, the best way is to design the blockchain in such a way that it is dynamic and old blocks can be easily discarded from the chain but at the same time the account balances remain verifiable. I am not sure how you even came to the 1.3 Terrabytes total.
Well the growth of the blockchain seems to be following an exponential trend, and if it continues like that it wont be surprising to see it larger than 1 TB by 2017.This is exactly why I've put so much of my effort into developing a new type of mini-blockchain scheme which doesn't require every transaction ever made to be saved forever.
With a max of 1mb per block the blockchain should not be able to grow faster than 52GB/year.
Although that is still very large.
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