Topic: unbearable blockchain size - page 2. (Read 2213 times)

and my reply was that you can have the cake and eat it.

rather than having the implementation useless until syncing. thus holding people up and the sync becomes not discrete and noticable enough to frustrate

you can be a full node and not have to wait. simply by devs releasing a implementation that emulates a litenode instantly while it discretely syncs in the background, unnoticed because its no longer a hindrance to utility.

i personnally am not bothered by the wait, i was just stating that, as of this moment, the only issue created by block chain size is the initial setup of full wallet, by this i am implying that there is no problem, as not many people need that full node on their pc.  those that want to run the node should expect some time to be used.  you want to start a new domain, you expect a possible 24 wait for DNS propagation.  technical aspects to all project take longer than the standard use version

as for the exponential vs linear.. its neither.

its not linear (straight diagonal line)

its not exponential (horizontal that curves vertically)

it IS an S-curve..


the issue is that we are still in the early days of bitcoin so we are still at the bottom section of the S-curve, so it appears like its exponential

only problem is that growth has been halted to not see the bigger picture

referring to your frustration of setting up a full node.

the reason your frustrated and many people are. is that while its setting up its not really 'usable' straight away, you cant see current balance and cant really spend anything until its synced..

right, thats the main frustration.

this can be solved so easily.

if the devs just got their implementation to not sync first then check unspents(utxo) second.. but instead grabbed some litewallet code that grabs unspent's data from other nodes first. and then done syncing second. the syncing then becomes just a background/unnoticeable thing. while the node is actually functional straight away.

bam!. easy to code, lets users just get on with using bitcoin straight away. problem solved

EG emulate electrum or other litewallets as soon as you open the node. then syncing is not a critical, thumb twiddling wait. its just a background function users dont realise is happening, because they are no longer forced to wait until synced before properly using it

OK, let's settle this:

https://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size?timespan=all


31 Dec 2012: 4.3 gb
31 Dec 2013: 13.4 gb (+9.1 gb; grew by x3.1)
31 Dec 2014: 27.8 gb (+14.4 gb; grew by x2.1)
31 Dec 2015: 53.6 gb (+25.8 gb; grew by x1.9)
31 Dec 2016: 96.2 gb (+42.6 gb; grew by x1.8 )

So far, as per above data, it's definitely more appropriate to say the growth was exponential, not linear. With the capped block-size the trend should change though.

referring to 3

the last time i installed a full wallet the download of the zipped block chain archive was a short download, but the amount of time it took the wallet to import the archive was nearly as long as it would have been to just let the wallet sync via linear download

this is the only time is using bitcoin when there is a huge issue because the the size.  i think it is just going to get to the point when fewer and fewer people choose that type of wallet.  someone intentionally setting up a full node will have to deal with it

UPDATE ON YOUR REPLIES

1- BTC blockchain is not growing exponentially but linearly (but is still growing) This still can be discussed as blocksize increases by time.
2- BTC blockchain size shouldn't be an issue as storage capacity are high and will become even higher in future
3- The main issue is block size which if it become bigger and bigger, will not be able to be downloaded quickly enough by all nodes if the connection speed of those nodes is not high enough

update of my previous post which had graphical description of growth..

here is blockstreams Sheep (in red) impression of what they want to tell the world will happen if blockstream doesnt start its commercial service
"1gb blocks by midnight"

vs

my opinion (in blue) of onchain natural dynamic scaling over the next 33 years

Excellent point! We MUST act now so that Bitcoin's blockchain will be robust centuries down the road. We MUST stop this small-size blockchain madness here and now else we're all doomed. At least that's what I would pen if I were participating in a paid sig campaign so to up my post count.

thanks

PS: I love the wew!

1tb a month lol

ok.. uploading. 8gb/month to send live relay of tx's and new blocks. per connection

for instance.
100 connections to fully synced node requires 800gb
10 connections to fully synced node requires 80gb

as for helping other nodes sync. that is the killer data wise.

100 connections to 0 synced node(where your its only seed) requires 9.88tb  (yea doom)
10 connections to 0 synced node(where your its only seed) requires 988gb  (yea doom)
1 connections to 0 synced node(where your its only seed) requires 98.8gb  (manageable)

the solution.
dont have 100connections..
reduce the connections= reduce the data needed to upload.
especially dont connect to nodes that are not near/already synced.. thats the main trick.

to emphasise this point..
if 75 nodes had 75 connections 5625nodes would get the data in 1 relay.
so anything over 80 is overkill/not required.

i can safely assume atleast 75 people have good internet. so not all 5600 nodes need to upload to that many. as the recipient probably already got the data via someone elses node. so if bandwidth is an issue.. bring your connections down. dont act like a 'supernode' if you are only an average node.

this is also why blockstream are doing their 'fibre' (supernodes) so that they get the data out in one relay so that other nodes dont have to do all the work.. which means you can happily play '6 degrees of separation' with 6connections(48gb) just to relay tx data and blocks so the nod can get second opinions from other sources.

Perhaps because none of those things come even remotely close to 1 terabyte a month worth of uploading (which a stock Bitcoin node will happily do)?

If you are going to make comparisons to justify your position, at least make decent ones.

That is not exponential, that is linear growth.

Dont be dumb and learn the difference. The blockchain size growth is capped to 144mb/day.

Exponential growth means that it doubles every day, but clearly that is not what happens, it grows at a constant rate.

And the storage cost is shrinking faster than the blockchain size growth, so that is not an issue.

you dont hear millions of people uploading livestreams complaining
you dont hear millions of online gamers complaining

you dont hear millions of people facetiming complaining.
you dont hear millions of people netflix viewing complaining.

yet fake doomsdays of 1gb by midnight is used to scare 5600 people.....!!!

rational 2mb soon 4mb later and growing when node users set a setting to show what they CAN COPE WITH, to grow at a capable acceptable and no issue rate.

..

"shout 1gb to make people fear 2-8mb" <- standard blockstream script
"shout alien invasion to make people fear an ant entering your house" <- standard blockstream mindset

..

also telecommunications company both landline and cellular have a five year plan. its called Fibre cable, and 5G cellular.

so by the time we get to 8mb (in years!) the speed of internet for average users will be much better than today.
after all we are not using dialup like 20 years ago.

ill emphasise it again

getting to 8mb in years..  not 1gb by midnight.
be rational, think logical, research realistically

I have confidence that solutions will be found in the future for problems we're beginning to expect now. Look at how quickly hard drives/solid state drives are progressing. These days you can get a 128 GB USB 3.0 for $25, so if nothing else changes to make blockchain more efficient (which is unlikely), developments in hard drive capacity should keep up.

I don't think the blockchain size will become an actual problem with regards to hard drive size. But I think it might become a problem with regards to download speed.

People with poor data rate won't be able to ever downlaod the chain completely because its growing too fast. This will lead to a decrease in number of full nodes. The HDD isn't the bottleneck with this.

ok imagine this is a ~450bye tx
*********************************************

input
signature
output

each star represents 10bytes for easy display

if you done the same tx but using segwit p2wpkh keys, the transaction looks like this
*********************************************

one thing that will blow your mind. the blue and red stars(bytes) are still transmitted physically. but at code interpretation level they are not 'counted' as going towards what goes into the base block.

but because at code level an opcode is used to flag old nodes to ignore data after purple. making it look like an anyonecanspend

the other stars (blue, red) are only looked at by new nodes.
  old nodes see:*********************************************  grey is ignored
new nodes see:*********************************************

while unconfirmed
old nodes wont morally relay or add a segwit tx and instead drop it. however a malicious actor can tweak their code to relay/force it into a oldblock. (hence why wpkh wallet key generation is not released pre activation to avoid malicious attacks)

after feature activation,
because only purple stars are counted (yet more stars are actually transmitted). this trick can allow more transactions into the base block
because they have room for 100,000stars (1mb)

so where say 2222tx's was 100k(1mb) stars. if everyone used segwit keys. becomes ~50k stars(~50%), giving ~50k(~50%) spare room in the block for more transactions
but remember the blue and red is still real data but just not 'counted' by the baseblock

this allows ~5000tx's(depending on ins and out and how many people use segwit keys) into the baseblock but the reality is the actual data transmitted is 2mb even with the baseblock still limited to 1mb

P.S whats said above should be interpretted by the concept. i used rough numbers for demo purposes. dont get knitpicky about the numbers. just learn then concept of HOW the switch around is used and HOW things are 'counted' or 'ignored' by nodes.. and HOW it differs to actual data transmitted

then look at the extra bytes added later when extra features are added.. and have a nice day

Satoshi did not set this limit in stone.
Let me quote satoshi (from October 4, 2010) for you:
This was more than 6 years ago, and full blocks have been limiting transactions for approximately a year.

Ontopic: at current growth, Blockchain is no limitation for a modern hard drive. Disk space increases exponentially, Blockchain only has linear growth. Even if blocks would get bigger, disk space can keep up for the coming years.
That being said, my current laptop will run out of space in about a year. I might upgrade, or prune by then.

you dont understand it

segwit takes out bytes from tx data (the signature is moved), this is a temporary one time 'gesture' and only increases tx count if people move funds and use segwit keys.

but later more bytes are added to tx data.

have you even looked at how many extra bytes are needed for:
CLTV
CSV
Confidential commitments

go find that out.

ill give you a hint confidential commitments are said to be (by blockstream devs themselves) around a kilobyte.
yep they want to bloat an average tx of 450bytes to be near 1.5kb for the same 2input 2output tx

like i said.
segwit temporarily makes an average 450tx 'look like' ~230bytes being counted in the base block with the rest in the 'witness area'(still totalling 450byte TRANSMITTED)

but then LN has their features. which increase the base block txdata ABOVE ~230 (thus reducing possible tx's in the base block again)

and other blockstream features add on, will add about a kilobyte.. (once confidential payments and other features is added)

go research

You don't understand the concept behind LN and Segwit, or  intentionally trying to mislead others...

du -sh ~/.bitcoin/
117G    /home/[snip]/.bitcoin/

Where did you get the number 6073 Mb if i might ask? Maybe you've got a pruned blockchain?

Btw: the size of the blockchain has nothing to do with how many people use bitcoin, and everything to do with the size and number of transactions.