Bitcoin Forum

I was discussing this in another thread. It's pretty much assumed that Monero's blockchain will be huge if more people start using it and they will not be able to keep it from growing since they have choosen to go the dynamic blocksize route, and it's a tradeoff for the extra privacy technology for the blockchain to be biggger. The question to be asked here is: What's the point, if the blocksize is going to become so big that the nodes will be way too heavy for regular users and more and more node centralization will ensue until only specialized people will be able to run nodes?



It is clear to me how Bitcoin with a conservative block size that allows people to run nodes + the extras that will come with segwit, confidential transactions, tumblebit, mimblewimble etc, is way more private than XMR with a network that is basically centralized (nodes too big to be spread across the globe, only corporations running the nodes).

Monero block chain is 8 GB what is less then Ethereum and way less then Bitcoins.

I am running a node and I am not a corporation.
So when do you expect I will become a corporation? Any timeline?

bitcoin blockahain is 70GB and is growing 10 giga per year if i remember correctly, monero is 1/9 of that so why you say it's a big blockchain? of course it's much olde than let's say zcash, so it must be bigger than the new coin, but still quite small than the bigger boys

Monero blockchain actually is around 3-3.5 GB. If you make fresh sync and have app that count traffic, you can check this.

After downloading blockchain stored in data.mdb in redundant format (to operate faster), which makes the file grow to about 8 GB.

Yeah Monero is quite a bit smaller than BTC blockchain at the moment. Though if it grows to the same adoption rate, I'm sure it has the capacity to grow just as large as bitcoin. It still has plenty of room before it reaches a level near bitcoin though.

An interesting Monero criticism brought up a few times before over the years.

Lets say BTC has been out for 8 years at 72 gigs.
Then lets say Monero has 2 years at 8 gigs.
Lets multiply Monero.. Same time period would then be 32 gigs roughly.

So what is the difference ? ADOPTION  :D
Monero has none and Bitcoin has LOTS.

So imagine the user base as equal..

And that is the underlying point here people are playing games about.
If the Monero guys hope to achieve BTC levels of adoption and far greater then ?
THAT is when there is an issue.
It's about creating something with known problems from the start as mentioned in the quote here earlier.

I think it's moot point though because Monero is not going anywhere.
It peaked and is destined to toil and wallow in obscurity forever.

then all worries with blockchain size are just waste of time.

This is what im talking about, when you consider the idea of Monero going as high as Bitcoin's current adoption (and we are all still pioneers in bitcoin if you consider it to mainstream tier usage) then Monero collapses. It cannot avoid node centralization. Bitcoin has already solved this by going the offchain route with LN, but Monero is yet to tell us what they are going to do, and thats why I cant consider a serious long term investment for XMR.

I'm not sure how you can say that since Monero's use is up, as well as its price. And with the release of the GUI, use should increase even more.

Oh come on now.. be honest.
The usage of Monero does not even vaguely compete with Bitcoin.
It's improved lately ?
Well that is squat and it has a long looooooong way to go before we can entertain that silly idea.

Problems can be solved.
They won't be unless we are honest about the issues we face.

But no one is addressing the underlying issues. Again, its cool if usage goes up, but how is the problem of node centralization going to be solved if the blocksize adjust dynamically? it's obvious the problem can become serious in the future if it catches up and starts getting used in bigger volumes.

Actions speak louder than..

Profits now.. problems get fixed later  :D

I think that really does sum it up..

I'm curious, how many full nodes does Monero actually have at this moment ?

https://www.ethernodes.org/network/1
Ethereum nodes (incl all Mist wallets) : 5326

https://coin.dance/nodes#share
Bitcoin Core Nodes : 4799

http://178.254.23.111/~pub/masternode_count.png
Dash Full nodes : 4226

Total nodes: 567 - Last updated: 41 minutes ago

It will go up exponentially especially when smart mining will get developed: https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/36/what-is-smart-mining

Good lord, so to summarize Monero is not just centralized with its traded volume at Poloniex (94.83% takes place there), but it is also currently a centralized and weak network
with a growing blockchain size, making it difficult to host full nodes on VPS servers in the nearby future ? (i'm talking about the 15Gb VPS SSD servers that you can rent for 5$).

Not at all. All you said was your assumptions.  I just answered on your question how many full nods is right now. Number doubled in not that long time.

Most people mine on pools. I am sure there will be plenty new pools in future, since it is not to difficult to make and host them. But as it is right now is perfectly fine decentralised. 500+ is huge number and all big pools are respectable ones.

well, if you call that decentralised then i really think we need to talk about the definition of "decentralised" with regards to blockchains and its impact on scalability.  

500 is way from word center.  Center is one.  You know in dartboard you have one center to shot at.  Problem would be if this center run out of electricity. Here are 500 centers.  So even when half world have WW3 there will be 250 centers left.

@qwizzie
You forgot about the "Ethereum is worse" retort.  ::)

What we seen is them simply trying to minimize and down play the OBVIOUS problem.

Are you implying something ?

Lets think of the concept of user support.
If we wanted BTC to be supported by home users mining.. it's pointless.
Why ?
Does Monero solve that problem ?

Seems to me other people are saying no.. it makes the problem worse.

So... how again is causing diversions using the retort "others are worse" work again ?

Well i am getting no where here so i am dropping out LOL
We started with the topic title but the OP seemed to have steered the convo about the chain size.
So i am leaving this one because i have nothing else to say ON-TOPIC.

HoneyPony ? I thought it was "FluffyPony" ?
And no thanks i don't want any of your "Future Coins"
Why would i buy Monero when i already had BTC ?
Didn't you notice it doubled in price in the last year ?  ;D

Well, storage capacity grows over time.  But frozen-in protocols don't.  The non-mining nodes in bitcoin are worthless what concerns the decentralization of the network.  They help somewhat in having a robust transmission network of transactions from users to miners, but any non-mining node that doesn't agree, can only do one thing: drop out of the system.  A miner that doesn't agree, can mine according to his preferences, and fork off.  But a non-mining node has nothing to say.  If he doesn't propagate a transaction he doesn't like, another non-mining node will propagate it, and even in the end, the user can transmit his transaction directly to a mining node which is the only communication that matters. 

So the number of non-mining nodes for bitcoin doesn't mean much: the centralized mining is much more of a concern.

It is nevertheless interesting for an individual to keep a non-mining node running, because it can help obfuscate his own transactions, and it can help him against fake information about the bitcoin block chain.  But that's about it.

As such, even if there were 10 times less full but non-mining nodes on the bitcoin network, that wouldn't matter much.

However, what matters is the fact that there's a hard limit on the growth in the number of transactions that the block chain can handle.  We're not even a factor 10 from that ultimate limit.  Bitcoin has no order of magnitude growth in transactions left.
As most transactions are, for the moment "greater fool speculation" transactions, and not transactions used for an actual currency usage, there's still a lot of potential currency usage adoption possible in bitcoin, if the trading would go down.  But there's a hard limit built in it.

As to the size of the block chain, even a chain that would grow with 1 TB a year only means a very modest investment for a node owner at this moment.  You get a 1TB storage for the order of $100,-.  So that's peanuts.  10 years ago, 1 TB of storage was much more expensive.  We can presume that 10 years from now, 1 TB of storage will cost much less.  So if 10 years from now, a block chain grows with a few 10 TB per year, wouldn't be a big issue for an individual wanting to have a full node either.
However, if the protocol has a frozen-in limit, then these technological improvements in storage don't mean anything.

A finite block size limit sounds like Bill Gates telling that 640 KB of RAM is more than enough for any personal computer (remember ?).

Yes, you can home mine monero.  So yes, if you home-mine monero, you really contribute to the non-centralization of the network, something that is gone since long in bitcoin.  However, I don't know how long this will still be possible with the rising market cap of monero.

Why are you repeating what i said ?

Total nodes: 723 - Last updated: 17 minutes ago

A month latter and smart mining is not yet developed and implemented in GUI but number of nodes still grow with quite nice growth rate of 27,5%
As it seems your worries are totally not needed, since number of full nodes grow extremely fast and not decrease as you predicted.

Lets talk about sybil attack resistance for a moment, what is to prevent an entity (lets say an authority like Interpol) from setting up 800 full nodes for 10$ each
and use it to attack, disrupt or snoop in on Monero's network in its intensified fight against darknet markets ?

Security-wise the low number of full nodes and its direct connection to darknet markets is making Monero very vulnerable.
Even with 2000 full nodes, the situation does not really change .. this will still be a weakness for Monero as its direct connection to darknet markets is
putting a bullseye on Monero.  

With regards to blockchain size i think in a few years when the blockchain has grown considerably, Monero will face the same problems that Bitcoin is facing currently,
by not rewarding people to run full nodes its full nodes network will deminish over time.
  

I doubt that this will ever be a problem, with regards to Nielsen's Law or Moore's Law even if slowed down https://www.nngroup.com/articles/law-of-bandwidth/

No it will not. .

Monero has an adaptive blocksize limit that avoids the whole Bitcoin blocksize debate. This adaptive blocksize limit works because Monero has a minimum block reward  of 0.6 XMR per block in perpetuity. This means that there is no need to rely on transaction fees to secure the proof of work (miners) as is the case not only in Bitcoin but in coins such as Dash that have a fixed maximum number of coins. In the case of Dash the problem is magnified since the falling block reward has to support not only the proof of work but also the masternode network and the funding of projects.

Once the fees are no longer required to support the proof of work etc., they can actually be used to create a market for scaling the blocksize. One significant advantage of this is that it avoids the kind of spam attacks against the memory pool that were recently launched against Bitcoin. These attacks rely on the fact that the bulk of the spam will never be mined because of the fixed  blcoksize effectively having a minimal cost to the spammer. As someone who runs full Bitcoin nodes I am well aware of the bandwith costs of these spam attacks.

Bitcoin's problems, or Dash's problems for that matter, with scaling cannot be solved with a continuation of Moore Law, Nielsen's Law etc. alone, because of the falling block reward approaching towards zero over time.