Bitcoin Forum

Anybody ever try to calculate the blockchain size when the last coin is mined? And the cost of that storage (assuming a network of a "reliable" size)? What kind of fee would be required to process one transaction at that time? Also if all current transactions globally were recorded in a blockchain, what would be the daily incremental increase in size?

The block size is dependent on the number and size of the transactions included in the block.  So it is impossible to guess how big blocks will be in the future and thus how big the block chain will be.  There is currently a 1MB maximum block size, but who knows if that will remain the maximum as the number of transactions increases.  You could just take the current block size (around 250KB) and use that to guesstimate the future block chain size.

So nobody's done a "cost of ownership" study for this product?

@zatoichi Blockchain is interesting because technically it doesn't store cryptocurrencies but stores transaction information only.

I don't understand this. I thought the blockchain had "proof of work" information.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_chain

There is supposed to be a block every ten minutes, but they sometimes come along faster when the network is steadily growing. Right now, as already said, a block is generally nowhere near the maximum 1MB limit, but last I checked we were still around 6-8min/block.

So, today, you are looking at adding 36MB of data to the blockchain per day. At the most, you are looking at 144MB/day. There's already over 14GB (please confirm!) of data in the chain, so at some point "archiving" older years of the chain might be necessary.

But bandwidth is still relatively low, and storage space is cheap. Running a node is hardly a cost in the grand scheme of things, and it's not even necessary for normal users.

Do you know how many nodes there are?

It does however the proof of work is in the blockheader.  The block header is only 80 bytes every ~10 minutes or 4.2 MB per year.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_hashing_algorithm

Of course that assumes an average 10 minutes per block, if the network hashrate is growing it will be higher so you could add say 30% to assume average 30% network hashrate growth over time and it still is ~5MB per year or 1GB every two centuries.

The overwhelming majority of the blockchain size is from transactions not blockheaders.  That size will depend on tx volume which is hard to quantify.  Currently their is a 1MB limit per block and the post above shows the max size per year under that limit but eventually that limit will either be removed or raised.

Still even that doesn't tell the "whole story" because the full historical block chain is not needed for either mining or verifying transactions, only the pruned blockchain which contains a copy of all unspent outputs (UXTO) is needed for that.   Currently the UXTO is about 10% of the full blockchain and as a % that will decline overtime.  Estimating the size of the UXTO requiring guesstimating the likely number of future users and the average unspent outputs per user.  The second factor is going to vary wildly depending on what usage scenario of Bitcoin in the future.  If Bitcoin is used primarily as a store of wealth (think digital gold) then the UXTO can be relatively small compared to the user base, and if it is a common high velocity transaction medium then the UXTO may be very large compared to the base.

So making any guestimates for something more than a century away is pretty much a shot in the dark.  The good news is that Moore's law is alive and on any century long timeline Bitcoin simply can not grow faster than Moore's law.  That means that over the course of a lifetime the relative "cost" will go down.  As an example a 6TBs of storage today costs less than a 1GB hard drive I purchased in 1995.  That is a 6,000 increase in storage per dollar in less than 20 years.   I have no doubt that in 20 more years a multi PB drive will cost less than a TB one will today.

Interesting to find out Moore's Law is applied to storage (I thought only speed). Speed of course has no brick wall, you can halve your distance eternally, but (ignoring quantum computing) if you pack a "transistor" into the space of an atom, you're pretty much done. Actually I take that back. You can only halve the distance between transistors until they are an atom apart. Same thing I guess as storage problem.

But I thought the mining algorithm only kept getting harder due to increasing blockchain size. So if you remove stuff it screws with the system.

False.

That would be a great true/false question for a bitcoin quiz. Wanna start collecting questions? I think a quiz score would be a good addition to profile information (rather than just "Activity" which is easy to get with one word answers....maybe they could multiply activity by post length).

Not correct. Each block's hash acts as an input into the next potential block, creating a 'chain'. 'Removing' a block would invalidate all blocks recorded after it. That said, technically it's only necessary to maintain the merkle.

What matter is that new people reading this thread understand what is right and what is wrong.

I think it is more important that they understand why it is true or false (knowledge integration). I still don't know why.

I would have to copy-paste the bitcoin wiki to explain that, that's why i linked it. I know, it is not easy, but that's how it works

What's a merkle? would be another great quiz question (multiple choice). I looked on wikipedia and didn't get too far. Then I went to "hash chain". It seems that if you have h999(x) you can't get to h1000(x). Maybe. But if you have h1(x) you should be able to recreate. So you just need to get in at the beginning or at password change.

Went to the link for "block hashing algorithm". Pretty dense. I was interested in "difficulty" though and linked there. Apparently the difficulty can go down as well. That would be another great reason for introducing Bitcoin2 now. Not only would it be less difficult to mine Bitcoin2 now but the shift in computing power away from Bitcoin1 would reduce the Bitcoin1 difficulty. Maybe you would be able to go back and forth with greater profitability. Say, every two weeks?

What?

Difficulty has absolutely nothing to do with block size, at all. Unless I am mistaken? It's simply a changing target, it always takes the same amount of integers to get there.

There already is a bitcoin 2, and a three, probably more. They are all complete failures as they should be.

You're right. I researched difficulty and found it can go down too. Depends on how long it takes for new bitcoins to appear. Bitcoin1 looked like a failure for a while (and may fail again...China knocked the wind out of it...and a vulnerability may be found eventually...worse than Sires/Cornell). Bitcoin2, being just a theoretical clone of Bitcoin1 would still have all the advantages of Bitcoin1 along with easier mining in the short term.

No,

The difficulty only goes down if the network hashrate goes down. Bitcoin never looked like a failure, china knocked no wind out of anything, and if any vulnerability in bitcoin is ever found it will be patched. Afterwards it will continue to be called "bitcoin," never bitcoin2, bitcoin 1.0, etc. The network, and thus difficulty, will likely go on without change.  

This has happened in the past, and it will likely happen again in the future. Bitcoin is still here, doing just fine and it's still called bitcoin. You could go mine one of those old forks if you wanted, and what you would be mining is an ALTcoin since is not the majority bitcoin chain.

Please note that "difficulty" is not a bad thing like your posts are implying. "mining coins" is just a temporary thing to put bitcoins in circulation, mining is there for security purpose. The higher the difficulty=the higher the security wich is a GOOD thing.

Difficulty is a double edged sword. On the one hand it protects bitcoin holders (hopefully). But it slows down miners. I don't think you'd find one miner who wouldn't want a lower difficulty level than other miners.

BTW I'm still trying to find out how many nodes there are (if you know). Isn't there a count somewhere?

Doesnt blockchain get bigger with messages people enter? I thought that.  So if people add messages with every transaction will grow more rapid that if didnt.  Could be wrong though.

Wouldn't the block size depend on how many transactions were in it when it was successfully mined? ie., you keep on adding transactions to it and as and when the hash generated is below the target hash, then this block is said to have been successfully created and a new block will start? So, determining the avg.size of the block based on the existing blocks would not provide a accurate number (or close to it) is what I think.

I'm a newbie here, so pls. correct me if my understanding is wrong.

I looked at:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transactions

and didn't see an obvious text message field. Actually that might be neat though. Send the smallest transferable amount to a huge list of addresses with a commercial message. Voila. Bitcoin spam!

What? It is supposed to slow down miners, that is exactly the point of the difficulty. While you may be a greedy bastard wanting to mine at a lower difficulty than everyone else, the rest of us know that would break bitcoin, in that case whatever you managed to mine would be worthless, so enjoy.

There is no count on the nodes, they come and go as they please. A node is a lot like a bittorrent client, some are well established and never move. Others only run when necessary and don't do much else. Why do you want a count anyway? What would that tell you?



You may have seen the messages on blockchain.info, but that is not on the bitcoin blockchain at all. I think there may have been a way to add text to a transaction, but I don't think it was ever used/enabled. It still is possible to send "messages" in the blockchain, but that's more complicated than I can explain.



You are exactly right. There's nothing stopping a node from mining blocks with no transactions at all, as well.

Good to know that I got some things right. 
But I was not aware that the block can have only the newly generated coins alone as its transaction and still be valid. Thanks for clarifying that pontiacg5. Anyways, I digressed from OP's original post. No more questions from me..:)

To spam Bitcoin blockchain, you have to pay fee - every 1000 bytes = 0.0001 BTC
Not a cheap spam...

What about signing message? Is that same thing or doesnt add to blockchain?

No, signing a message just uses the public and private key pair from a bitcoin transaction to verify ownership of the private key, without revealing it. The blockchain is used as reference only, no information is added.

Oh I see.  Thanks for clearing that up as was unsure.  Everytime learn something new Im even more impressed with this new tech!

Editing post, so read recently about man who added wedding vows or something to Blockchain and was proud to say will stay forever.  Doesnt stuff like that add unnecessarily Blockchain size?

If it is what I think it is, that falls under the "It still is possible to send "messages" in the blockchain, but that's more complicated than I can explain." I addressed earlier. I don't believe that method actually involves submitting your own transactions, but picking and choosing choice bits of info from previous confirmed transactions and cataloging them together. In that way you could use the blockchain almost as a dictionary, to recompile a message with a lot less seed info than the resulting message.

That's my basic understanding, pretty cool stuff!

"What? It is supposed to slow down miners, that is exactly the point of the difficulty. While you may be a greedy bastard wanting to mine at a lower difficulty than everyone else, the rest of us know that would break bitcoin, in that case whatever you managed to mine would be worthless, so enjoy."

You may want bitcoin to be a utopian community but it needs to function in the real world that actually has devious greedy people.

My favorite story of greed:

While the battle of waterloo raged everyone in London looked to Baron Rothchild (I think) who they figured would hear about the result of the battle first. He sold everything and everyone thought Napoleon had won. The market collapses. At the bottom Rothchild snaps up everything having sold his investments at the top of the trough. Napoleon of course had lost.

If Bitcoin can't handle this kind of greed, time to slink away.

Now mind you I'm not a free market fanatic (there are no free markets actually...unregulated markets naturally produce monopolies. As soon as someone has a competitive advantage it's like Bobby Fisher's chess game, trade trade trade...each trade magnifying your advantage.) In business as your market share increases your costs go down due to volume buying and everybody else's costs go up since they are buying smaller quantites. Markets have to be regulated.)

Money is not a mathematicaL system, it's a human system. Right now to me this seems like a HUGE risk, some say just to avoid a 2% transaction fee. Well there's nothing that wakes you up like a 100% loss.

Again, you make absolutely no sense. Your story relates in no way to mining. Bitcoin can't stand insider trading???

I don't even know how to respond because I don't even know what you are trying to say. Bitcoin is hard coded to prevent greedy people and monopolies, yet you want to morph and change it to make it easier to mine? If you have a problem with how bitcoin mining works, go mine an altcoin to take bitcoin's place when it fails. Whatever you pick won't be called bitcoin.

Your right, it's not about mining. The most likely analogue is after all 21 million bitcoins have been mined. Then you will have to pick the cheapest transaction processor, likely, the biggest. As they gain market share they cut their prices and push out the competition (did somebody say they hate regulation?) Then instead of charging 2% they charge 1.9% It happens all the time. All that work for 0.1% difference? Well maybe is a little more anonymous at least (but not totally).

So we are talking about a potential issue more than 100 years in the future. Alright...

No lone "transaction processor" would ever monopolize on the transactions. If they did they would destroy the network security and trustless operation that gives bitcoin value. To monopolize the market is the same as tanking it, but there won't be a recovery with you in control.

Also, others with serious money in bitcoin would invest in mining transactions if they saw one going for a monopoly for the same reason.

All 100 years in the future of course,

The difficulty is just an adjusting variable (up or down) to target a 600 second (10 min) block generation time.

As for block chain size, it will be an important topic in the near future.  As bitcoin gains more adoption and the number of transactions goes up, the block chain growth will be huge.  Having to download a 100gb block chain would be a real annoyance for many.  Possible innovative changes to the protocol may be needed to avoid this.

Also if they exceed 51% of the transaction processing power, things get interesting.

!!!!

No duh! What do you think monopolizing mining power is?

That is why it will not happen. If a company tried to entirely monopolize bitcoin mining they'd destroy it. That would destroy any profit they'd gain from monopolizing the market.

My goodness! You know what a wall street raider is? It's someone who goes into an ailing business and soaks it for all it's worth leaving basically nothing. It is not wise to believe everyone is trying to build some ecosystem. If they see profit in it, there are those who will destroy perfectly good businesses/systems. If you don't have a control in place, it will happen (did somebody say they hate regulation?) Kinda like Murphy's Law.

Can't tell if stupid or just trolling.

It makes absolutely no sense to monopolize bitcoin. You yourself admit that they will only destroy it if they see profit in doing so "If they see profit in it, there are those who will destroy perfectly good businesses/systems."

That is the problem!! If they monopolize bitcoin there is no profit. They have all the bitcoins, but nobody in the world would pay them anything for them. Bitcoin gets value from it's security, if the security is gone the value is gone, thus it makes no sense to try and take all the security. THAT IS THE CONTROL PUT IN PLACE FROM THE INCEPTION FOR BITCOIN, FOOL!

This is my last post. If you still can't see the fatal flaw with your argument nothing in the world will change your mind.

I'm not talking about a raider monopolizing bitcoin. I talking about a raider destroying bitcoin. Through legal or illegal means simply using the formula: will I get out of it more than I put into it.

Use Electrum client if you cant handle the storage requirements or you are using Bitcoin only few times in a month.

I'm not worried about my requirements but the system requirements, e.g. it is possible the blockchain will grow so big no one can afford to store it anymore (especially since the system doesn't really work unless many people can afford to store it). Other post here have already suggested pruning the blockchain, however, If bitcoin really takes off that might or might not solve the problem, especially if a majority of people are just investors and never spend the bitcoins.

I guess this would be the worst case in 2140. 21,000,000 bitcoins evenly distributed among 9 billion people (a very low estimate for 2140) the majority of whom are investors (everybody gets 1/400 of a bitcoin?) And the non-investors (say, 4,000,000,000) generate just one transaction a day (although possibly prunable eventually). How big a blockchain would that be? And what would be the daily increase in size?

Storage HDD size and Internet speed increases much faster than Blockchain requirements. In 10 years, 1TB will be not much of your HDD size, and download will take 1 day easily as well

Blockchain preservation society? Almost sounds like a central bank bitcoiners are trying to get away from. If 51% of nodes don't have the blockchain aren't we in trouble? Wouldn't a bitcoin preservation society be under exactly the same pressures as central banks. Who sits on it? Are they elected? One poster suggested if a flaw is ever found in bitcoin it will be patched. Who would do that? Do we get to vote on which proposed patch to use? Is that one vote per bitcoin or one vote per owner.

You vote with hashpower. You pick the chain you want to mine, either directly as a node, or by the pool you choose to mine. A node can't be a node without the blockchain. Users don't need to be nodes, they can submit transactions to nodes without the full blockchain.

You ask the most simple questions. Do you need someone to teach you to use google?

wow u guys have a true crypto warz going on here hahaha

Somebody said they would not longer post but seem to have forgotten it. As a result, and since any disagreement is seen as "trolling" I am locking this thread.