Bitcoin Forum

It dawned on me what if i wanted to store a video on the blockchain, i can't! 1MB limit.
i want to store a video in an permanent, unalterable, easily accessible,  way. the blockchain is perfect for that.
i guess i could sign the video and save that sig to the blockchain, use that as proof the video is authentic. but that feels like a work around.

is there a TX_Data_Max? should there be?

how much fee would a 8mb file cost?

is this abuse of block space?

Definitely not needed or advised for Bitcoin. That is like an atomic bomb to Bitcoin.
If people are worried about spam tx attacks bloating the blockchain, videos being added would definitely kill it.

If you want this type of feature, a new coin should be created for this purpose.

Work around the 1mb limit would be to split the file to multiple blocks, and render them that way. I don't know if it's doable, but thats the only thing that crosses my mind that could
bypass that size limit. But that is definitely not good for blockchain as it is today as it would choke transactions.

Better just use it to store a torrent file. That way you won't be dependent on single point of storage, and it wont "expire" after time, or get deleted..

The blockchain used by Bitcoin was not designed for doing something like that. Storing small amounts of information is okay and doable.

It is a good thing that you can't.  Why would I want to store a video for you? Why should I have to?


No. It isn't.


That's what hashes and signatures are for.  They provide a way to represent some data without needing the entire data set.


I guess that depends on how you choose to encode it.  Lets assume that you will only create "standard" transactions, and that you will use 80 byte OP_RETURN scripts to store the data.

8 MB / 80 bytes per transaction = 100000 transactions.

The DEFAULT_MIN_RELAY_TX_FEE per transaction is currently 0.00001 BTC.  If you pay a 0.00001 BTC fee on each of 100000 transactions, that should cost you approximately 1 BTC.


In my personal opinion?  Yes.

you can't argue that the blockchain isn't the best way to store information is a permanent, unalterable, easily accessible,  way.

but i guess the information on the blockchain should be the type that is used to authenticate something without relying on a 3rd party.

we  keep track of the BTC TX, so we can authenticate TX's without a 3rd party.

a hash can be used authenticate the video, or whatever large file.

80 bytes per transaction isn't much at all...

blockchain bitcoin and so much great

unbelivably its prob still competetive to some mobile download rates

How is collecting a video 80 bytes at a time from a >50 GB and constantly growing database "easily accessible"? If you e.g. compare it to an USB stick or a <insert cloud service here>-account?
OP_RETURN is prunable data, so you can not even rely on "unalterable" or "permanent". If you want to avoid this - you can - you will cause other issues and might solve these two, but you will not have easily accessible data.

Note: Im biased, I dont think I should store your video for you. There are probably alt coins made for this exact purpose. At least I heard about "proof of space" concepts a while back.

Adam imagine if all bitcoiners wanted to store one video each on the blockchain and that was possible. Bitcoin would be a history right away. I think that with this everything is said. We don't really need bigger blocks just to store videos on the blockchain!

What you said isn't a workaround, what you said is what you should do. How do you expect Bitcoin to scale if we flood it with videos? I mean look at Youtube, imagine if we had to host all those videos on the blockchain. No amount of blocksize increases would ever allow for such a thing.

the thing is not everyone would want to because it's expensive to do it.

if miners are OK with holding millions of GB's of data  so long as they get paid... who's to say this is bad?

problem is the miner that mines the block gets paid say 1BTC to fill that block with data, then every other miner has to agree to also store this data but they didn't get paid anything...

running a full node now requires MASSIVE HD and would literally take forever to dwl? maybe, maybe not!

full nodes do not need my video file to authenticate BTC TXs, they don't need the TX_Raw_data part of any bitcoin TX. so full node could simply ignore that data part of a TX?

is that even possible? seems to me it is, then one copy of the bitcoin blockchain isn't necessarily the same as another in that they all contain ever BTC TX but the data associated with each TX would only saved by the nodes whom it concerns. if no one cares that i signed some lengthy contract no one dwls it...

maybe all the node could simply save a 64bit hash of the data.

proof the data is saved by everyone and only the node that care about the contents of that data save it.

that way you could literally save GB's of data to the blockchain without effecting block size.

some fork would have to be done to better handle TX_DATA.

the "blockchain" could contain every single pieces of information known to man!

all you have to do is collated every single pieces of information known to man, and then get a 64bit hash of that info, and save that to the blockchain!

one or a few node(s) holds the actual data, every other node holds the proof / timestamp of this data, bacily.

now anyone can dwl and verify the data. without bloating up the network with data.

You can certainly use blockchains for this purpose, but it's best to use one that's designed for it.  I'm sure there are altcoins and other projects better suited to this sort of thing.  File storage sounds like it could be 'Maidsafe' or 'Storj' territory, so perhaps look into those and any other similar concepts.  Or if you just want a reference to a document stored in the blockchain, that sounds more like 'Factom'.

If only something like 6 sec vine video :) But I think what blockchain isn`t best idea for store. Peer-to-peer network better for this purpose ;)

the main reason to store data on the blockchain is so that the data cannot be modified after.

say i write up a contract on a piece of paper, "if bitcoin price goes to 350 i will send 0.1BTC to DooMAD" we both sign it. then price goes up to 351, but don't pay up, I say the contract stated "375" as the price, and i have made a fake copy of the contract with the modified info.

how do we solve this, without trusting a 3rd party?

we store the contract on the blockchain, but we don't need the contract itself on the blockchain, just something that authenticates the contract, so all we have to put on the blockchain is the hash of the contract. with that you can prove what the contents of the contact are.