Topic: network limits and block chain length (Read 512 times)

Yeppers, client surely must change.  But i want to understand the math behind it so i know a legitimate strategy is existing.  Been studying for the last year the protocol in detail, as I see P2P technologies in general as the ultimate salvation of the internet if one goes forward 50-100 years.  (That's probably a talk for another forum all together - lol)  But for now, I want to know if block-chain pruning and dust consolidation has a basis in trustworthy crypto operations.  How do we shrink and defrag the block chain without violating the trust network it establishes?  And simply updating clients can be a massive headache - the more people who use the system the harder it will be to get everyone to upgrade, so backwards/forwards compatibility for any major changes might be infeasible.

As I see it, if this math and logistics issue can't be solved, then the currency has no long term future.  I "believe" there must be a solution, but belief doesn't pay bills as they say....

ah good so not the only one

it seems to me that they will fork the chain and change the client at some point

sort of like you can read an email you wrote 10 years ago, even though you are on a different os and hardware, web browser.

FYI, I made an account here as I've been digging for months on this question with no luck and want to pose the exact same querry.  Would really appreciate if someone could enlighten us as to the strategy for future Blockchain management (or lack thereof) because this is keeping me from adopting BTC's for any use.  Long verification times and the need for being online to conduct a transaction suck but I understand the reasons and can live with them.  But the exponentially growing Blockchain keeps me up at night so to speak.

Current growth rates shown here now hitting 6 GB:
http://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size
Note my local storage shows 7.1 GB of block storage at time of this writing but maybe the blockchain site excludes dead-end forks or something.  (I've had a 0 balance wallet for a looooong time but love analysing its data. 

One doesn't need to think far ahead to plot a disastrous course where increasing transaction volume continues to accelerate the ballooning block chain storage needs.  (More than a Six fold increase in one year!)  Merkle reduction is awesome, but it seems to have limits.  And I've read some interesting articles for example about scaling up the system, but everyone seems to be skirting this blockchain size issue.

SO.  A world in which the clients all must trust some few massive google sized petabyte blockchain storage systems?  Well that just sounds like we're creating a new central banking cartel here.  Does anyone have a plan to keep the system svelte and lean enough to remain true to the vision?

I have read a lot on the block chain length problem

it seems to me that even the best solution only halves the block chain sizes eg, merkel/orphan etc.

thus it would seem to me that the exponential growth would destroy block the distributed nature of BC an leave it vulnerable to take down by GOVT's hitting about 10 main providers

the moores law is not keeping up with exponential growth and anyway software never increases in speed that fast

even then no one is actually implementing any of this merkel/orphan....thye just talk about it and the blockchain get bigger faster every day

it seems if any serious uptake is going to happen there has to be a fundamental shift....

I would have throught that would be that only a rolling solution with say 4 blocks back (or enough to reach some validation level) would be needed, that the mac total size of the block chain would consist of all the [21M BTC/the number of smallest division] x history 4 blocks back and x other data needed = max ever

sort of like how time machine works, it only saves the changes....

I don't care that x paid y 3 years ago, only that this was validated by at least 6 miners 4 times over....

this rolling solution seems to be the only way out

because not only this but the network bandwidth of billions of transactions that always have to sent by millions of users  out every time is going to be the ultimate ddos attack by te users on the system they want.....see banks dont keep this data, and visa does not either they just work that it was all valid and then send the money/credit of to the next person...the end.



I hope I am really wrong....please someone help me