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Topic: Size of BTC blockchain centuries from now... - page 4. (Read 10798 times)

full member
Activity: 155
Merit: 100
September 28, 2012, 05:43:14 PM
#27
by that time I see an entirely new form of currency and bit coins will be about as obsolete as 8 track tapes.

Aaron
sr. member
Activity: 392
Merit: 250
September 28, 2012, 05:37:28 PM
#26
wtf do you mean centuries from now?

it's only good until 2120 something
full member
Activity: 155
Merit: 100
September 28, 2012, 05:34:05 PM
#25
you would think that they could break them into say 100 meg pieces that can be loaded as that one chunk, already 'pre figured out' or whatever you want to call it, and then maybe the last 30 days trickle in as it does now.

How about, after a transaction has been verified a few thousand times, umm duuh it's VALID, lets move it to an inactive block chain or something.  I know each piece works off the previous but we we take a 100 meg
piece say 'THIS' is the answer from that ... that gets fed to the next transaction, it might speed things up a bit.

Aaron
kjj
legendary
Activity: 1302
Merit: 1026
September 28, 2012, 10:45:49 AM
#24
Btw, how big is the database right now?  It's not stored in the directory I thought it was but I assume my updated but original client contains the entire chain db.  Speaking of that, what directly is it stored in for Windows 7 64-bit?  Because it uses soooooooooo much IO, I want to move it to a secondary drive if possible.

Also, I know this has massive security concerns but if someone downloaded a client that included a giant 1 year history worth of the block chain database for example, how compressed archive friendly would the database file(s) be?

Code:
2012-02-19 1028273116 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat
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2012-07-11 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 27005578 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
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2012-08-22 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 646700956 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-08-23 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 661270387 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
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2012-08-29 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 744126478 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
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2012-09-01 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 789335949 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-02 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 804388646 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-03 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 821006790 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-04 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 836312363 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-05 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 854129159 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-06 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 873526155 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-07 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 889422332 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-08 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 903365802 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
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2012-09-10 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 930943985 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-11 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 944491878 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-12 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 960655424 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-13 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 972003589 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-14 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 987247808 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-15 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1001929255 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-16 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1014553077 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-17 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1026133089 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-18 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1038611622 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-19 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1053155737 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-20 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1067596678 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-21 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1080601402 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-22 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1094006521 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-23 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1105101587 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-24 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1118726220 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-25 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1129992308 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-26 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1142190581 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-27 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1156590441 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-28 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1169408710 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat

I don't keep historic data on blkindex.dat, but it is currently 1079406592 bytes.  (Currently meaning right now, not when the snapshot of the block000?.dat files were recorded.)  Oh, and these are my files, not the files.  Yours might be a bit different depending on which orphans your node saw.

I'm not sure about how to move it in Windows.  I *think* you can shut down, copy all the files, edit your bitcoin.conf to include a datadir=D:\blah\ line, and start again.  Pay attention if you do this, using the datadir= option changes where the client looks for EVERYTHING except the bitcoin.conf.  But I'm not sure about that, you may need to use something more elaborate, like a NTFS junction.  The default data dir in Windows is %APPDATA%\Bitcoin

Sadly, it isn't really compressible in the usual way.  Almost everything in it is high entropy, so it won't compress much, if any.  The devs are working on other ways to distribute the files and reduce their impact.
legendary
Activity: 3416
Merit: 1912
The Concierge of Crypto
September 28, 2012, 09:05:49 AM
#23
Centuries from now, the block chain might be a few terabytes in size. But every smart phone in the whole world can store it on the latest version of the microsd card, or even in the phone memory.

Our bandwidth speeds would allow a new phone to completely download the block chain in 1 hour from the neighborhood coffee shop that has free LTE (or whatever WIFI there is then.)

The lite clients wouldn't exist because every person with the slowest and oldest working smart phone runs a full node, and the higher end phones would be mining. The desktops at homes would be mining too in the high ultra-tera-bazillion-hash rates, for the 0.000001 BTC we get for every block every 10 minutes at an obscenely high trillion difficulty.

Then, centuries later, someone inherits an envelope that has a paper wallet with 10 bitcoin private keys, each one worth a few thousand full bitcoins (whereas everyone else has about a dozen bitcoins total worth their annual salary) that was saved a few decades prior.
sr. member
Activity: 392
Merit: 250
September 27, 2012, 11:58:34 PM
#22
Btw, how big is the database right now?  It's not stored in the directory I thought it was but I assume my updated but original client contains the entire chain db.  Speaking of that, what directly is it stored in for Windows 7 64-bit?  Because it uses soooooooooo much IO, I want to move it to a secondary drive if possible.

Also, I know this has massive security concerns but if someone downloaded a client that included a giant 1 year history worth of the block chain database for example, how compressed archive friendly would the database file(s) be?
sr. member
Activity: 462
Merit: 250
September 25, 2012, 04:13:28 PM
#21
Has anybody attempted/published a client or utility that could could verify the chain using openCL?

GPUS are used for the hashing involved mining now, is there a reason why it would be inefficient to verify the same way?
In my experience, the bottleneck is not in computation. The slowest thing during block verification are database operations. Within one block, different transaction "inputs" use "outputs" from different previous blocks. The program needs to access all of those blocks to verify "inputs".
legendary
Activity: 1064
Merit: 1000
September 25, 2012, 04:02:58 PM
#20
Please note that the long time it takes to download the blockchain is not a download limit. It's because for each block the client check the blockchain to be sure it's ok and yaddayadda. So basically it's epic hard disk crunching.
Just downloading the blockchain would take less than a hour now, it's not even 4GB. It's the verify part that slow down it.

Has anybody attempted/published a client or utility that could could verify the chain using openCL?

GPUS are used for the hashing involved mining now, is there a reason why it would be inefficient to verify the same way?

Maybe another project to put on my list? However, I would think that professional developers much more advanced in this technology have already considered it.  Grin

sr. member
Activity: 462
Merit: 250
September 25, 2012, 03:31:08 PM
#19
You can run a full node that prunes
Which will save, say, 70% of space. One will still have to obtain a copy of remaining 30% at least, which will be a lot, still.

I am concerned about supposed future deficiency in new installations. Most existing installations will be shut down sooner or later for various reasons. Without enough new installations, number of full nodes can drop low enough for one powerful entity to be able to control most of the remaining.

that doesn't imply there are only a few nodes
In my opinion, few will be interested in hosting huge amount of data.

Also, nothing stops you acquiring a copy of the database that you know is trustable (eg, there is a hash of it in the git repository) and bootstrapping from that
Yes, I am talking about bootstrapping from trusted data. I'm not sure if full verification of the block chain will be feasible at all.
member
Activity: 66
Merit: 10
September 25, 2012, 10:03:06 AM
#18
I think the limit will go away and also that it won't matter.

Storage is really cheap guys. If you end up needing an array of terabyte drives to hold the whole chain, so what? Most nodes and virtually all participants in the system won't need the entire dataset.

Bear in mind not one but several organizations store the entire web and the history of almost every page, on hard disks.

The limit will not just ”go away”

Most of the network has to agree


legendary
Activity: 1526
Merit: 1134
September 25, 2012, 09:34:02 AM
#17
You can run a full node that prunes (see Satoshis paper). The only time when you need nodes that have full block chain copies is to bootstrap new nodes from scratch, which will eventually be quite rare - but that doesn't imply there are only a few nodes, just that setting one up isn't something lots of people do every day.

Also, nothing stops you acquiring a copy of the database that you know is trustable (eg, there is a hash of it in the git repository) and bootstrapping from that, you don't have to rebuild the entire DB from scratch.
sr. member
Activity: 462
Merit: 250
September 25, 2012, 09:09:31 AM
#16
Block chain size growth will make installation of new full nodes expensive. Number of full nodes may decrease with time. In that case, power over Bitcoin network will likely move to few rich enough entities. Lightweight clients rely on full nodes.
legendary
Activity: 1148
Merit: 1008
If you want to walk on water, get out of the boat
September 25, 2012, 08:45:18 AM
#15
Please note that the long time it takes to download the blockchain is not a download limit. It's because for each block the client check the blockchain to be sure it's ok and yaddayadda. So basically it's epic hard disk crunching.
Just downloading the blockchain would take less than a hour now, it's not even 4GB. It's the verify part that slow down it.
legendary
Activity: 1526
Merit: 1134
September 25, 2012, 07:39:46 AM
#14
I think the limit will go away and also that it won't matter.

Storage is really cheap guys. If you end up needing an array of terabyte drives to hold the whole chain, so what? Most nodes and virtually all participants in the system won't need the entire dataset.

Bear in mind not one but several organizations store the entire web and the history of almost every page, on hard disks.
mem
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Herp Derp PTY LTD
September 25, 2012, 02:20:34 AM
#13
Right now, there is a hard-coded limit of 1 megabyte per block.

If we assume that limit never changes, that gives:
 1MB per block * 6 blocks per hour * 24*365.25*200 = 10,519,200 MB

... or 10.5 terabytes for the maximum size of the entire blockchain over the next 200 years (somebody check my math, I'm really good at dropping zeroes).

I expect that in 200 years 10 terabytes of storage will cost a few pennies.


Now whether or not that 1 megabyte per block limit should go away is hotly debated, and will be debated more and more as transaction volume increases.

Nice info, thanks Gavin  Smiley
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September 25, 2012, 12:48:14 AM
#12
Right now, there is a hard-coded limit of 1 megabyte per block.


Is the 1 megabyte hard-coded limit something expected to change?

If it stays like that, I guess Bitcoin will not be good for micro payments as transaction fees will rise.

If the limit is raised, the blockchain will grow faster than expected.

Whatever is done has pros and cons

What direction is Bitcoin going to take? Who decides?

 Huh

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... it only gets better...
September 18, 2012, 08:57:35 AM
#11
Swarm client combined with 10-year-ledger, search the forum and rejoice Wink

+1
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September 16, 2012, 07:33:50 AM
#10
Swarm client combined with 10-year-ledger, search the forum and rejoice Wink
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September 16, 2012, 07:07:00 AM
#9
30 years ago we had 1 mhz 8 bit processors,   maybe a whole whopping 128k of ram, 140k fancy new 5 inch floppy disks and you might have been one of the rich guys who could afford the fancy new 1200 baud accoustical modem instead of the 300 baud normally used to hook up to your favority BBS.  Hard drives were there, I think 40 meg was the high end for consumer at a price tag of about 1200 bucks if I remember properly.

Look at what we have today.

16 core, multi gigahertz processors,  128 Gigs of ram, solid state drives or you can grab a 3 terabyte HDD fairly cheap, and baud rates in the mega and giga range.  Let's not forget the 'free' internet access at many many coffee shops, mcdonalds, etc as you travel around, and libraries too.

Somehow I have a feeling that as the size of the chains grow, so will technology so it should not be an issue really.

Aaron
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Gerald Davis
September 14, 2012, 02:13:11 PM
#8
I expect that in 200 years 10 terabytes of storage will cost a few pennies.

Okay, I should have been more accurate in forming my thought.
Besides, just storage... there is bandwidth, HD (device speed), probably RAM is somehow also intertwined to search the transaction history, etc...

All of which have been doubling in terms of x/$ for decades now.  While they don't all follow Moore's law exactly they are all exponential.  It is inconceivable that 50 years from now RAM, storage, computing power, and internet connectivity bandwidth won't be many magnitudes higher than today both in absolute terms and in performance per dollar.

Still as SgtSpike pointed out there are lite-nodes which don't require the complete blockchain.
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