Bitcoin Forum

I was thinking about, does anybody want to startup a business that will sell the bitcoin blockchain on Blu-Ray disks, so that people can have their blockchain secured and archived? I just gave you a good business idea.

---

For example not everyone has time or resources to run a full node. However most people here would like to own a copy of the bitcoin blockchain to authenticate it, and to archive it, and just for collection as well.

People could start up a business whereby they put the blockchain on bluray and sell it online. And say every 3 or 6 months you give out new versions on another disk.

The blockchain currently can fit on 1 x 100 GB bluray disk. And then in a few months you just give out a new edition with the latest part of the blockchain.

This way anyone can have the blockchain without the need to download it (most people have bad internet anyway), they can just buy it online ,and they can serve as an extra authenticator to the original blokchain, because they just put in the disk copy it on the harddrive and they can startup a full node anytime.

The more blockchain copies are out there, the more secure is the bitcoin network, because in any hack event or god forbid a 51% attack in the future, many people can authenticate the real original blockhain.

It could be a good business idea for entrepreneurs out there, since I`m sure there will be demand for this. Everyone would like the bitcoin blockchain on their disk shelves, and they could startup a full node anytime, so it can incentivize people to run full nodes as well.

I thought if you want to use that external version of blockchain with your wallet it will have to be validated first.
And while downloading blockchain directly by wallet itself blocks are validated simultaneously.

Another problem is that blockchain is growing bigger every minute. In the time your physical backup will arrive via postal services Blockchain could be couple GB bigger.

Well current blockchain size is already well above storage capacity of regular Blue Ray discs and it won't be long before it reaches beyond what even BDXL discs can hold. Also, you would still need to download the rest of the blockchain from where the data on the disc ends.

You could get the checksum of every block from the network. And then where you start your disk first time you can validate the entire disk to see that you got a original copy not a fake copy.

Yes, its growing bigger, but you can give out new parts of the chain every 2-3 months on another disk. Or it can depend how frequently you want to give out the new version.

Its not necessarly for just being up to date, but to have the bulk of bitcoin transactions secured, and accesible for everyone. Either way the more confirms and the oldest a TX is, the more valid it is.


You give out volume 2 on another disk.

I honestly don't think this idea would work. People who are interested into running a full node already have enough disk space and high-speed Internet service so they don't need to get any other prerecorded Blockchain when they can download it themselves. Also this stuff will be very outdated by the time it gets to you and for collectors value one could just buy an external hdd and store the whole Blockchain on this instead of collecting a dozen blu rays every couple months and still the database will be outdated.

You cannot know, you have to ask the market.

But even just a yearly release of the blockchain to the people that dont have it, and have too slow internet to download 100-200 GB by that time, could be happy about it.

i don't think that the bitcoin blockchain can be in blu-ray, i mean, not the best method, unless it is an RW. you know, a very infrequent occurrence such as 51% attack will damage your recent block thus that disc may be led to out of order.

Yeah I really don't think that you could put the whole blockchain onto a blu ray disk. Doesn't really seem like a bright business idea to me. But that's just my opinion.

nowing blockstreams worse case scenario of 5mb blocks (using their segwit and confidential payment codes along with the eventual blocklimit of 2mb=5mb total potential bloat of data per block as of 2017)

each 25gb disk would only store 5000 bloated blocks as of 2017. which is the equivalent to about a month(34 days) costing $7(delivery included)
obviously each 50gb would hold 2 months, and the cost of $10(delivery included)
obviously each 100gb would hold 4 months, and the cost of $15(delivery included)

so the downsides
1. data coming from a single source so chance of abuse
2. risk of viruses included in disks (nefarious producer or intercepted/swapped during delivery)
3. $5+ monthly cost and probably still going to be a week+ out of date due to disk production time and delivery
4. requires people to buy a blue ray drive and endless disks each month

i think that instead of trying to make a business to get people who cannot afford good internet to shell out $5+ a month along with new blue ray drives. we should not be concentrating on the 7 billion people who as a whole dont have good internet. but instead we should concentrate on just the 1 billion that do have good internet.

inspire 1 billion people to be full nodes from their home with their good internet, is much easier to achieve than trying to convince people to buy a disk each month purely because they dont have good internet. because afterall those without good internet are not really going to to be internet savvi type of people. and it will just be like trying to sell prada shoes to a homeless person

Absolutely no way you gonna be able to convince 1 billion people to run full nodes without any incentive ( and if you offer an incentive it would have to be a damn good one too).  And I don't think focusing only on people with decent internet is a good idea, Bitcoin needs reach everyone. The obvious solution for people with really bad connection is to simply use online wallets. Blockchain's inner workings and software wallets will only ever appeal to the techie types anyways. Right now people are wary of hacks but as we move toward a government regulated Bitcoin, we'll see better protection/insurance.

I was under the impression that it's the indexing that takes forever these days. The download is the easy bit, albeit rather elongated.

I'm not so sure. Exactly why did you choose Blue-Ray as the medium here? You do realize that a lot of people have no way to read those discs either? People would have to get Blu-Ray certified/compatible hardware. Have you thought of other mediums?

It is not really about high-speed internet. You don't need internet that is unusually fast for a node, although the initial download takes a while and wastes good bandwidth.

It is going to be outdated on whatever you store it, the question is just 'how much' it is going to be outdated.

yes bitcoin should reach everyone.. but trying to push 7 billion people is harder than 1 billion.

this topic is more about making people ful nodes rather than a different topic about making people want to spend bitcoin.
so sticking with the topic about full node adoption.. trying to get 1 billion is easier than 7 billion

Although the idea is nice, the market for this is quite small and you get yourself bored for waiting to get a single order each time. Unfortunately there are a lot of countries that are affected with slow internet connections and running a node would get large portion of their bandwidth (I'm one of these people due to my location now, it won't be worth running a node for me since all my online activities would be affected), even though it's pretty much nothing for most Europeans, Americans and with exception of few countries in Asia to run a node. Another thing is that not many users care about running one (unfortunately), and all they want to do is use BTCitcoin for payment purposes and nothing more (again unfortunately). Those that run some nodes, already have high speed internet connections therefor they just keep on downloading themselves and save the extra bucks of ordering one of these.

i did it with ethereum blockchain.
People in my work saw me using an exchange and wanted to try it too, so i explained how it works, gave some ideas and sold a eth blockchain for some bitcoin   ::)

Oh really man, that is good business man you did.

Blockchain bitcoin is growing every day so relasing update on yearly basis will not work and realeasing monthly version is quite irritating and hard to do. And there is so much piracy going on with all those bluray cds all over the world. How that can be controlled?

Usb drives have made all other storage devices obsolete

No, because data on USB drives can be corrupted by malware.

Plus USB drives are reusable, CD's are not ,so  they serve as an authentication item to prove the integrity of the files.

better use a M-Disc for that.

But who is going to verify and authorize the production of your Blockchain storage devices? Why would people trust in you? You can't just expect to whip up some discs and slap a Blockchain badge on them and people will come buying these like hot cakes because they can't just download it themselves? And people with limited bandwidth won't even care about running a node in the first place nor owning legacy Blockchain data on their bookshelves and they will use a simple online Bitcoin wallet to do business instead.

Everyone verify it for themselves.



Hey no need to be hostile it's just an idea. And the free market will decide if there is demand for this, not you.

So I just gave an idea for entrepreneurs, and we will see if anyone will do this.

Why exactly bluray? Why in a dying technology insert a new tech?:P

I`m not sure what you mean by dying. I still buy disks even though I own some USB sticks and external HDD drives.

USB type drives can easily be corrupted, which I dont like. Sometimes the simplest item is the safest, hi-tech is not always good, especially if you want to validate the authenticity of the bitcoin blockchain.

So disk storage is perfect for that IMO.

I am not being hostile to you, you asked the people of the forum a public question about our opinions so I stated mine. Mind if I ask would you run a free software someone handed to you on the street on your computer fully trusting them that it's not malware or something insidious isn't lurking in there? Have you seen the tv show Mr. Robot? For this to work every cd will need to be verified to be safe before releasing on the market. And yeah the free market will decide if they want to buy something they can get for free on the Internet for a couple of days' worth of downloading stuff.

Honestly, I think this kind of business would work but not so much as you can consider it a 'successful' one because I'll be frank that there are only a few percentage of users who would want to buy blockchain in a blue-ray discs.

Has anyone proceeded with this idea? I was thinking about the same. Not as a business, rather as archiving the chain for a long time. I picked blu-ray, because it's long lasting and EMP resistant medium.

If you want to keep such records yourself, go ahead. Honestly, I don't see the point. Hundreds of new blocks are added to the chain each day. If you saved the latest blockchain data on Blu-Ray today, in just one week from now you would be like 5-7k blocks behind. It gets bigger the more time passes. Data on CD's and DVD's tend to get lost with time, at least in my experience.

There is also another factor worth considering. It's not 2016 anymore. Many modern laptops don't even come with CD/DVD drives anymore. And in the future, there will be even less demand for it. Everything is online now and fast internet connection allows us to access that data from online sources.       

I didn't want to answer to a topic so old (you should have been asking in a new thread), but since @Pmalek has done that, I'll continue.
Keep in mind that new blocks are added continuously to the blockchain. So most probably at the moment you've finished burning the BR, the data will already be (a bit) old.

Plus, it's not advised to get the blockchain from somebody else, so the original business could not work. If you do this for yourself - it's up to you.


I don't agree 100% with @Pmalek (I agree with him only 98%), a backup like this has the potential to save you some time when your HDD will crash, but that's the only use I see. That's not much though, plus with every day passing more and more data is added to the blockchain and if you go on this road you may have to make regular such backups (maybe every year).

I'm not going to continue this threat then. This is the last post. CD and DVD lasts much less than BluRay discs. Point is to shield from EMP attacks. I'm aware that I won't have latest data, but loosing 1 month seems still much better than loosing full chain. Main point is to have some kind of disaster recovery. Armageddon recovery.

A personal achieve makes sense. It's especially useful if you have a slow internet connection, and it would take you days to download and synchronize the latest blockchain data. I wouldn't overdo it though. Once every 3 or 6 months maximum. Those archives of yours would quickly grow in a physical sense if you burned new Blu-ray discs every month. 

Blu-ray's are only a few dozen GB large max, so there's no way a single disk will hold 450GB of a blockchain. Handling multiple disks in the correct order quickly becomes a PITA, the read speeds for all that data is not going to be great (better than with a slow network connection, but still), and also most people don't have a blu-Ray drive (or even a DVD drive) because they are expensive and out-of-favor.

If I was pursuing this idea, I would use old 1TB HDDs instead of discs.

Well, one more reply, since you hit the nail. That's precisely why I was asking if anybody did try to go forward with this idea. I'm thinking about how to distribute files into BluRay with as little pain as possible. My plan:

1 disc will be MAIN and it will include:
/.bitcoin/chainstate/ directory. It's possible to add new files into disc, so I don't have to use new disc every time.
+ bitcoin.conf (not really needed)

2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ++ discs will include only files from /.bitcoin/blocks/ directory. Which seems to be nice to handle. Only blk*.dat and rev*.dat files. One or two pairs of such files are created every day and never modified later (ignoring deep rollbacks). I have 100G size discs, so it's not too many discs even for some years ahead.

files in main /.bitcoin/ directory: peers.dat, mempool.dat, banlist.dat, fee_estimates.dat, debug.log, onion private keys, wallets --> will be excluded (I think this should be fine)

then I have /.bitcoin/indexes/txindex/ .. which is probably not needed and can be rebuild? I don't know.

That should be all. If you can ACK/NACK my plan, let me know. I do have Blu-Ray drive, so that part is okay with me :-)

You just need to clone the blocks/ and chainstate/ folders, but other than that it's an ACK. You don't need bitcoin.conf config file.