Bitcoin Forum

There have been quite a lot of threads lately with people complaining about the size of the block chain, specifically (1) how long it takes to download for new users and (2) the amount of disk space used, often combined with complaints that the "core dev team" isn't doing anything about it.

This is just a quick note to explain where we're up to with this.

• Starting from a few days ago, MultiBit (https://multibit.org/) is the default recommended desktop client on the bitcoin.org choose your wallet (http://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet) page. MultiBit is a what we call an "SPV wallet" so is capable of processing thousands of blocks per second, and its checkpoints are refreshed frequently enough that for brand new users, they will usually be synced with the chain in 5 seconds or less. I'll explain a bit more about how this works in a moment, as we have many newbies join us in recent months who may not be familiar with the details.
  
  
• At some point Bitcoin-Qt will change such that it's able to delete old blocks. The details are still being worked out, but most likely you'll be able to say "Use up to 10 GB of disk space" and it will never use more than that. Nodes will broadcast how much of the chain they have and are able to serve. New nodes that are starting from scratch will have to search out other nodes that still have the full chain and sync from them, but any node that just wasn't online for a while and needs to grab the latest parts of the chain will be able to use most of the others. By controlling disk space usage, you can also indirectly control bandwidth usage (you can't upload data you don't have).

The latter piece of work isn't done yet, basically because Pieter has been busy lately with other things (like: real life). He did the bulk of the work already last year, but some parts still need to be designed and written. Remember that nearly everyone taking part is still a volunteer except for Gavin.

Intro to SPV mode

OK, now that we're recommending MultiBit as the default wallet app for new users, what does this do? MultiBit is like the Android "Bitcoin Wallet" app by Andreas Schildbach. They're both based on the bitcoinj project that I run. Essentially, these clients download sub-parts of the block chain and then do a bunch of maths to verify that it all hangs together. Because it doesn't download the whole chain, an SPV wallet is light and fast. But because it does download and verify parts, an SPV wallet can talk to the regular P2P network because it doesn't really have to trust the remote server. This makes it more decentralised than something like Electrum or blockchain.info which relies on special servers.

How does this work? It's described in Satoshi's original white paper in the "simplified payment verification" section (hence, SPV). But here's a brief description to save you opening up your copy of his paper. Each block in the Bitcoin protocol has two parts, the header and a list of transactions. The header contains data linking the block to a place in the chain (like the hash of the previous block). A full Bitcoin node (Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind) examines the block headers to figure out which chain of blocks has the most mining work done on it, and then verifies all the transactions in order in those blocks. The best chain determines the order the transactions are applied to the database and thus which transaction loses if there's a double spend. But (and this is crucial), the ordering is the only thing determined by miners. All the transactions still have to make sense. Miners don't have arbitrary power, if they mined a block that just magicked money out of nowhere or included bogus transactions, full nodes would all reject it.

In SPV mode things work differently. Because they don't download the full chain, they can't verify each transaction individually or build a copy of the database. Instead they verify the headers to find the best chain, and then assume the contents of the best chain must be correct. This is usually a valid assumption, because the majority of mining power is honest. However if there was to be a 51% attack then SPV wallets might display arbitrary nonsense for as long as the attack lasts. They would get back to reality once the good chain became longer (harder) than the bogus chain again.

This leads to the question of how SPV wallets find transactions that send them money, if they don't download the whole chain. The answer is they upload to the remote Bitcoin nodes a "filter", which that node applies to each transaction in the block. If the filter matches, the transaction is sent to the SPV wallet along with a mathematical proof that it was really in the chain (we call this proof a Merkle branch, after Ralph Merkle who invented them). The wallet verifies this proof and thus knows the transaction really was accepted by the majority of miners, without having to trust the server.

Because we're talking to random computers on the internet and not a trusted third party, the filter is designed to let you control your privacy. It is not a list of your addresses, as it is with the blockchain.info wallet. It's actually what we call a Bloom filter (named after Burton Howard Bloom who invented them in 1970). You can't directly get the users addresses back out of a Bloom filter, instead you have to test each one you find in the chain against it to see if it matches. Also, the filter can be made "noisy", which means it randomly matches some other addresses as well. When the Bitcoin P2P node you're downloading from finds a match, it doesn't know if it really found one of your transactions or if it was a false positive. And because there are so many P2P nodes, it's possible to split up your list of addresses and send a subset to lots of different peers, so none get an accurate idea of what's in your wallet (bitcoinj doesn't do that today though). By adjusting your false positive rate, you can decide how much bandwidth you want to spend on garbling the other nodes picture of your wallet. If you're on a very slow or expensive link you might decide you want no noise in your filter at all, if you're on a fast wifi connection, you might be OK with downloading a megabyte or two of other peoples transactions just to obscure which ones are yours.

Using these fancy mathematical tools MultiBit and the Android wallet app give us the same nice performance that we can get from a web wallet like blockchain.info or Coinbase, but without the need for any central servers and keeping Bitcoin's P2P nature intact. SPV wallets will always be fast no matter how popular Bitcoin gets. Together with being able to delete old blocks, these are our solutions to the ever-growing size of the chain - which has been Satoshi's plan since the very first day Bitcoin was announced.

I hope it's all clearer now and everyone understands what's going on.

Thanks for the update

Having said that, remember that if you want to keep the contents of your wallet private, you have to be careful with SPV mode. Because your node doesn't relay transactions, any transaction you do relay is obviously from you. In the future the payment protocol will help, but for now assume that by using an SPV wallet your peers can figure out what coins you own.

The other issue is that to scan for new transactions you have to tell your peers what addresses are in your wallet. Fortunately we can use a trick called bloom filters, which is kinda like telling a peer "give me all transactions paying addresses starting with 1ab, 1ar, 1a5 and 1w2", but combined with other information that may be enough to track you down. Edit: Bloom filters have been found since I wrote that to have almost no privacy.

You should be connecting over Tor, or at least over a proxy, if you want to maintain your privacy. Unfortunately as far as I know right now most SPV clients don't make it easy to connect over Tor, but it is possible.

Full nodes don't have anywhere near as serious a privacy problem even without Tor because they do relay transactions, so unless someone is watching every node out there they can't know if you were the one who broadcast the transaction first.

Of course while in the short term finding peers to connect to for your SPV node is free, but that won't be true forever:


There's also the issue of DoS attacks which we will need to solve soon - anyone with access to around 125 or more ip addresses from a similar number of /16 subnets can currently DoS attack the entire network by simply filling up every node on the network's incoming connection table. (finding the ip address of every Bitcoin node that accepts incoming connections isn't hard) We limit that to 125 right now. Such an attack wouldn't use very much bandwidth, and is actually pretty easy to carry out. A small botnet with a few hundred or thousand hijacked desktop computers could definitely pull this attack off. At the very least SPV nodes would become unusable, and after a few hours to days the whole network would probably collapse aside from miners and the like who have made manual connections to each other.

What we are going to have to do is require peers to either do something useful, like relay valid fee-paying transactions and valid blocks to us, or expend some kind of limited resource, like perform a proof-of-work or just pay directly via micropayment. That'll make widescale DoS attacks prohibitively expensive, but it also impacts SPV nodes too that don't contribute to the health of the network. Of course, obviously if such an attack happens this code will be written and deployed very quickly, so don't get any ideas...

This, combined with off-chain transactions like https://inputs.io, gives me a lot of hope for Bitcoin.

'Something useful' could be, among other things, being verifiable situated in a domain which is underpopulated.  The domain could be geographical, political, implementational (meaning it works in particular way such as implementing an underrepresented overlay messaging protocol) or whatever.

Indeed - that's what we try to achieve with the current system of trying to connect to nodes with ip addresses in a varied set of /16's. Varying implementations is an interesting idea too, although one that's harder to actually verify.

If you can come up with ways to do more than that we'd love to know, but be warned it's a really, really difficult problem.

Thank you.  Very good explanation.

I started on a path to describing some of this stuff before I got more interested in running my sawmill:

  https://sites.google.com/a/tcilgl.com/paracoin/home/depth_l1/network_mesh#TOC-n-space-characterization:

Several concepts which I've yet to attempt to describe would be

 - multi-pass proof of work with non-predictable algorithms.  So, for instance, head blocks are solved mainly by transfer nodes while legacy datasets are consolidated and locked with long duration (very high difficulty) md5 leveraging existing ASIC investments (at a frequency aligned with codebase releases.)

 - dedicated hardware nodes which contain useful things (like FPGA for adaptable algorithms, TPM for certain node identity needs, POE for a reasonable balance of power, cost, and convenience.)

 - node link rewards where 'close' peers are issues part of a reward which would foster a greater mesh density health.

I hope that the nature, capabilities, and relationships between potential adversaries of Bitcoin are becoming more widely appreciated in these post-Snowden days.  It is why I consider broadly defensive systems to be the most critical aspect defining value in a crypto-currency solution...or at least a 'reserve' one.

Whether there is the potential to adapt the existing Bitcoin as a value core in total and develop a robust supporting framework around it is debatable and I continue to feel that it is probably a long-shot.  Most likely Bitcoin will evolve toward (if not 'remain') an element of something akin to PRISM.

 edit: s/density/health/.  By 'health' I mean diversity more than anything.  The methods by which a 'healthy' node population could be engineered have some interesting parallels to how biological populations implement genetic material transfers.

This thread only makes me think: Bitcoin is too much. The possibilities it opens, technologies it enables - it's all just too much for businesses and governments and people to grasp easily.
Having said that, it is precisely these kinds of threads that help us digest bits and pieces.

Thanks Mike, retep, and everyone else!

Thanks Mike for the posting this info about SPV. Great work indeed.

Coincidentally, I have known Ralph Merkle for a long time and also listened to his talks about nanotechnology. But I did not realize that he also devised the Merkle tree which Satoshi used.  Just think that he is not only at the forefront of the next revolution in manufacturing, but also has an influence in the next revolution in finance. What an amazing guy!

Thank you for the nice write up. I've donated a bitcoin to your tips address.

Thanks! Much appreciated!

What about saving the blockchain file from a full client and uploading it to some server once a week or so? Then new users could just download that big file and have their full clients sync up quite fast since they won't need to download the blockchain from other nodes.

Jeff runs a blockchain BitTorrent for that exact purpose.

Good explanation. Thank you.

Mike thanks and keep up the good work. You are very dedicated to let us know what's going on and I love that. We need people to teach others about the bitcoin and while all people registered here to the forum consider themselves experts of bitcoin in front of their families, there's only some 0.1% who actually know the code and details and can teach the other experts about these fascinating details. (What I miss a bit is some teasers to actually get my hands dirty. I saw links to the code maybe twice. I'm pretty sure that more people would get involved in working on the code if there were more invitations like that. After all there must be tons of developers on the forum dedicating their brainz to other stuff, like posting on the forum ;) )

This would also be a good place to remind people of Moore's "law" - the fact that, since the mid-20th century, the cost of data storage and the cost of computing power have been decreasing exponentially year after year, regardless of technological challenges, market crashes, or anything else. Surely Bitcoin may go througn growth spurts, but eventually blockchain growth will become linear (when we hit the block size limit, or when we remove the limit and let the transaction frequency reach an economic equlibrium based on tx fees). Either way, I see no big problem, and I've been running a full node for several years without any additional cost.

what about electrum how does this compare?

Electrum doesn't store the blockchain locally. It reads it off remote servers.

yes I know but this multbit proposal does not store the entire blockchain either, just a clever compressed version

I'm actually impressed. After opening the client, I was ready to make transactions after a second.
Then, in order to recover the last 60 days in my Qt database, this is another story. It will take ages ;)

I'm waiting for innovation on top of BTC and the extensive use of the Internet of Trust.
What BTC opens is just amazing.

 

I've just downloaded and installed MultiBit 0.5.13 on a Win7-64bit PC and it crashes as soon as I try to start it... That's not very new user friendly!

Hence the 0.5.13. Bitcoin is still in the beta phase.

It crashed? Could you report that in the MultiBit forum or issue tracker please. I haven't heard people complain of crashes before, but of course, it's always possible.

Good to know there is a solution to the problem.

It's an interesting and informative read, thanks.

I did a 'Run as Administrator' (which is noted as being needed under Win8 - I'm on Win7 64 bit) and it started up and works.

Anyone working on a C implementation, preferably without a GUI?

I'd (with regret) run a SPV client in certain circumstances (compiled by myself on remote systems), but I'll never run anything Java and re-installed my one and only Windows machine from scratch to make sure I got completely rid of it some months ago.  Among other things I was creeped out by that 'Look' toolbar which got on there 'by accident' and could not be removed from Chrome.  That was well before Snowden informed the rest of the world how vulnerable we all are to PRISM machinations and the like.

That's weird. You don't have to run the app as administrator on MacOS or Linux. OK, it'd be nice to fix that. I guess the issue is directory permissions somewhere. If you start  a thread in the MultiBit forum, perhaps Jim will explain a bit more.


Jeff Garzik started on one called picocoin. However you're crazy if you prefer C to Java for this work. The Java installer on Windows is obnoxious and Jim shouldn't rely on a pre-installed JVM, but you can easily bundle a stripped down VM with an app that doesn't have any kind of crapware with it and is self-contained inside the application itself. The JVM is open source and has multiple competitors anyway, so this will always be an option.

Once you fix Oracle's bad distribution habits, the advantages are pretty major - specifically, a guarantee against buffer, heap or stack corruptions that could allow a remote peer to compromise your wallet. Software written in C has a long history of containing such bugs. Also, you don't have to write platform specific code.

The right fix for the Java+SPV wallet problem is just to improve MultiBit so it bundles its own custom JVM instead of using the system provided one.

i have also found that updating my client to the current blockchain seems to "timeout" someones.. and i have to restart my wallet to get it to start DLing the chain again.

The more I think I understand about bit coin the less I actually do! :-\
Good read though!

Unsurprising.  The 'marketing' is not what I would consider to be particularly up-front.  Many of the claims about privacy, peer2peer, scalability, centralization, etc were at best temporarily true.  Many of the legitimate advocates of the solution honestly believed the 'hype',  and very few of those who understood the technical aspects of the solution sufficiently to see the looming issues did much toward disabusing the crowd about some of some of the misconceptions.  We all have at least a financial stake in growing the userbase after all, and it would probably be disingenuous to neglect that as a factor in how the solution has been presented.

What happens, if in a hundred years from now, almost everyone is using the "Use up to 10 GB of disk space" feature? All the old nodes can probably keep up, but new nodes starting from scratch won't be able to find a node with the full chain, or have difficulty doing so.

Or is that a problem we shouldn't worry about for the next 50 years? I can see full nodes "centralizing" then, but it's possible that there will be entities or countries that will maintain a full node independent of other full nodes.

Right now, everyone running QT or the reference client is a full node.

I can see a far distant future where no normal or regular individual has a full node (except for the geeks / enthusiasts / those who can afford), but there will still be at least maybe 1 full node per country with the bigger countries having several, maybe one per university or one per "department" or "agency" or one per "private corporation".

I mean, large companies already maintain servers for all sorts of purposes. What's another one just dedicated to just bitcoind with 500++ gigs of space (or whatever is the then current capacity of hard drives or equivalent)?

In theory, Bitcoin can still operate even if every copy of the old parts of the chain are destroyed. It means that to start a new node, you have to copy the directory of an existing node that you trust to be correct. This is obviously a problem if you don't have a node that you trust, and it weakens the "trust nobody" aspect of Bitcoin somewhat, but payments would still flow.

In practice, yes, if the chain became absolutely gigantic then you'd get a small number of large organisations that commit to keeping it around as a kind of public service I'm sure. Or they could sell copies of it on stacks of BluRays or magnetic tapes. Look at it this way. Several organisations keep entire histories of the web (google, archive.org, probably microsoft as well). That's a titanic amount of data too. Somehow it happens anyway.

Typically through monetizing the intelligence information coming off user access and generally enticing traffic for other properties which do so, though in the case of archive.org I think they may be primarily a philanthropic organization.  One way or another, if they are US based it is a fair assumption that any network interaction will be analyzed by various state and private organizations.  Indeed, unless one is exceedingly careful that assumption should be made about any Internet activity anywhere.

Bringing things back to Bitcoin, I see this sort of utility as a threat to the solution.  Any crypto-currency will be a rich source of intelligence information in proportion to it's success.  There is probably a role for a solution which welcomes such analysis for users who don't care and a role for a different implementation which focuses on hardening against such analysis (and the potential for sister monitoring and legal infrastructure to attack the solution), but each implementation will have one opportunity to decide what camp they wish to be in.  Being the first, Bitcoin get's the 'first round draft choice' here, though it looks to me like the principle movers of Bitcoin have already made the decision.  For my part, I'm falling back into the mode of deciding to live with whatever decision is made...as if I have a choice...

Such a data storage storage scenario seems highly unlikely, with this kind of tech emerging:
"The [nanostructured glass] allows unprecedented parameters including 360 TB/disc data capacity, thermal stability up to 1000°C and practically unlimited lifetime."
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/mediacentre/news/2013/jul/13_131.shtml

It really is transmission bandwidth, and the in-memory (RAM) requirements, for handling the blockchain which are the limiting factors.

Yeah. That tech sounds cool, but even magnetic tape can store massive quantities of data for almost no money at all. You don't get fast access to it of course but to serve up the chain you don't need that, what you need is bulk streaming reads which is exactly what tape robots provide.

tvbcof, much though I dislike industrial-scale spying, it has nothing to do with how the chain is stored or served in future. The chain is a public document by definition.

My comments were directed toward presenting a potential explanation to the 'mystery' of how 'public services' provided by corporate entities come to be.

Many of us never really saw the storage aspect of the block chain as much as a problem, and I'm pretty sure we've been through that before.  Access to the data both locally for functional purposes and for WAN transmission catch-up operations are somewhat more salient concerns, but they are surmountable.  The defining issue here is real-time and near real-time economic activity on the network, and how core Bitcoin is going to evolve to support this.  If it does so natively, I argue that it is almost certain to fall victim to abusive surveillance practices and be under constant threat of technical and legal attacks if it challenges other solutions.

That said, it is a perfectly valid point of view that most potential users don't really care about the privacy issues and the service providers are right to make a dime from their efforts anyway, and also that the solution does not necessarily need to present a challenge to other solutions if implemented 'correctly'.  It's not my point of view, but I can accept it as valid.

Make paid (like in mining) full nodes, but, to make it really spread around make a rule of no more than x nodes per geographical area (city/county/country) or ISP  or per certain ip adress group. That way it will be as decentralised as possible, with lots of people simply co-hosting from their web servers, not some big company datacenter full of servers having a big chunk of the global node count. Also reward for hosting a node should be very smallish. Just to cover average costs by a 5-10%

Are there any stats someone could provide as to how much bandwidth and storage per month are we talking about to run full node like Blockchain?

My "blocks" folder is currently at 11GB. Since block size is limited, the growth can only be linear in time (even if we occasionally increase the block size limit), but storage per dollar increases exponentially over time. Therefore, I don't see it as a problem in the long run. Also, see http://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size

Bandwidth is currently a tougher question. I typically see bitcoin-qt using tens of kB/s, sometimes running at 200-300 kB/s for minutes or hours (this is mostly my upload to new users downloading old blocks). Unfortunately, I don't have any solid data to offer, just these observations.

Thank you niko for the info. Those numbers look lite in all things considered.

Thanks, its nice to hear feedback like this, and get some more understanding of the more technical aspects.

Ok, so lets assume one of Mike Hearn's microtransaction channel per person with a one year timeout was used. This way only 2 transactions would need to hit the blockchain per person per year. All the rest could be instant, micro and off the chain anonymous transactions without third party risk. The dream of every bitcoin user but:
8billion * 2kB = 16TB of data per year. With 50k blocks per year 16TB/50k = 300MB per block. Lets get there in 10 years, keep incentives to move transactions off the blockchain and nobody will complain. Even Satoshi Dice would work better with microtransaction channels anyway.

I disagree because we are forgetting about the past in a very big way. While the size of the blockchain is growing at an exponential rate the amount of resources required to store and transmit data is falling at an even greater exponential rate so the ability of running a full node will remain within the financial abilities of regular individuals that choose to for years to come. I actually expect the number of full nodes to increase over time. They will for the most part lie with those who choose freedom, Free Software and GNU / Linux over those who choose subservience, DRM, propriety software, and locked devices such as those running IOS and recently some running Microsoft Windows.

Let us instead of trying to look 100 years into the future take a look at 100 years into the past, and ask the following question: How much would it have cost to send 1MB of data over the telegraph network in 1913? At say 0.50 USD per 10 words http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/nonnenmacher.industry.telegraphic.us, and let say we can encode 4 bytes per word. This gives us 250000 words or 12500 USD in 1913 dollars. This was way outside of the budget of the average person, but something a millionaire (billionaire in today's USD) such as J. P. Morgan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._P._Morgan could have afforded. Today of course sending 1MB of data is so close to free that it is very affordable to even some very poor people.

There is a real danger here for Bitcoin it that many for fear of loosing the decentralized nature of Bitcoin to a growing blockchain, will cripple Bitcoin with arbitrary limits, while ignoring the real threat to the decentralized nature of Bitcoin. This threat is that in the future regular people will not be able to run a full Bitcoin node because their computing devices are locked down and infected with DRM. Cost will not be the limitation in the future DRM will. Even today I can purchase a computer perfectively capable of running a full Bitcoin node and pay for it with Bitcoin at FreeGeek http://www.freegeekvancouver.org/ for way less than the price of an iPad or Windows 8 RT "computer".  

Thanks for the complete explanation. This is really a good reading, so at least I can tell some newbs about the reason why they should use Multibit for a start and not worry about it.. :)

A quick question: Under what reason should we use Multibit instead of Electrum?

You can use either. Electrum relies on special/custom servers and offloads most of the work to them. MultiBit uses the regular P2P network. There are pros and cons to both models. I prefer the pure SPV/P2P model of course (which is why I implemented it!) but if you have some particular reason why you want to use Electrum then go for it.

This question often comes up. I thought the reason was the old blk000x.dat files remaining from the pre-0.7.8 (not sure) version, and which can be safely erased - but it would be nice if a developer here could confirm and explain.

Edit: Here is a relevant quote from deepceleron:

Hmmm. Thanks for the update. This is very interesting!

Thanks for the explanation. Just downloaded it  ;D

Let's not forget that a lot of applications have already started doing their transactions off the blockchain. The blockchain is only updated when coins are deposited and withdrawn.

What do you mean? Transaction = withdraw and a deposit. Did I miss something?

Beginners often get it wrong that the deposit address at MtGox is not their private stash of bitcoin at MtGox but merely their identifier to deposit but this address might send to arbitrary addresses without their balance being affected.
Equally if you deposit via a MtGox code you deposit bitcoin on your balance that does not touch the block chain.
Standard bitcoind does book keeping. If you tell bitcoind to book money from address a to address b, it does not send a transaction to the blockchain if a and b are both in the same wallet.
Redeem codes are a more complicated way to achieve this MtGox-internal booking from one person to the other. It's more complicated as the sender does not a priory know which MtGox user will get the value later on.

These are the current off-chain transactions. They have the problem of the user having to trust MtGox in my example but have the advantage that transactions that don't hit the chain are essentially free.

With micro transaction channels, you can take the third party risc out of the equation as "MtGox" would not need to actually have control over the users' money to make that happen. "A" could tie his update to grant MtGox more money to MtGox proofing that the money gets sent on to the right recipient "B".

To summarize post above this one, when you deposit/withdraw money from the service (such as Mtgox), you do a blockchain transaction, but all money movements inside the service (in case of Mtgox it would be trades) are off blockchain, and therefore are very fast and free.

I've always felt comfortable with this solution since I can keep balances at various like organizations which are affordable to lose.  A bulk of my BTC holding are in very deep storage of course.  Even I cannot easily get a hold of them much less anyone else.

If I feel uncomfortable with one organization I can easily move some funds to one which I trust more or who's policies I like better.  I've done this from time to time.

Going beyond this, larger organizations with a significant userbase can coordinate with each other such that they settle on the blockchain on a periodic basis (say, once per day.)  In this way, the transaction fee can be shared between many thousands of users.  The fee could become high enough to make it well worth solving a block at even a modest TPS rate.

Such a solution keeps the block chain light enough that it can be realistically maintained by private individuals scattered throughout the world.  That is the big win to an 'off-chain with Bitcoin backing' evolution of the ecosystem.  I see it as the best compromise to address the scaling issues as we move forward.

gah, i cant download it
it uncompatible with windows 8  :'(

What is incompatible with Windows 8?

Not very clear of the technique details, but this function is attractive, thanks man.

Just use a online wallet, blockchain, coinbase etc.

Link:

[ANN] Bitcoin blockchain data torrent
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=145386.0

… and get your money stolen or get LE easy access? Come on, the bitcoin idea is be your own bank. No third party risk should be acceptable for the more security aware people.

Indeed.

Bitcoin is decentralized... the antithesis of bitcoin is really centralized websites and authorities.

An issue which most people probably fail to consider is that there is a vast difference in the needs that the different participants in the ecosystem have.

For many of us, the cost of a bag of Doritos and some pot represent a fair fraction of our net worth.  (Ya, been there, done that.)

Others need a safe place to store blocks of value in the above $100k range.  A small fraction of our net worth can keep us going for years and a theft of it (say, from something like the Instawallet failure) would be infuriating but would impact our financial statement only in a negligible way.

For my part I consider Bitcoin to be a superior solution to such things as bank deposits and IRAs for protection against certain types of risk.  Currently at least.  Critically, I also consider a financial service provider to have the same sort of protections that I have by utilizing Bitcoin as a store of value in their operation, so even if I am not in full control or the certain fraction of my net worth that I may have on deposit with an off-chain provider, I am still enjoying some of the benefits that Bitcoin offers even for that...or would be if Bitcoin retains it's broadly distributed peer-2-peer nature at it's core infrastructure level.

It may sound dickish, but I don't see low net worth people as really needing an extreme heavy weight and solid financial solution (like high precision per-purchase representation in a globally distributed and mission critical ledger) very badly.  Sure, it would be great, but if it kills the more critical aspects of the solution via growth which forces the infrastructure into the waiting arms of the big players, it is something which can be and should be sacrificed.

Plenty here in the community believe that the path forward involves it supporting exclusively a flourishing exchange economy and are ambivalent, and often hostile, to the idea of Bitcoin as a store of wealth.  I would hope that the minority who take an active role in the actual engineering of the solution are a bit less absolutist and a bit more pragmatic than the more rabidly philosophical participants (cough..Jeff of BitPay...cough.)

yes its to big, it takes forever to download.

Imagine if all big online wallets are destroyed or taken by government.

What will become of btc?

How many coins, that are currently in circulation are stored on the cloud? 10% 20% 50% ?

With these talks of regulation - if they implement it, they will surely go all-in to force it on these online wallets and(!) exchanges.

If the service used UCE (User Controlled Encryption) then the results of a service takeover attack would (or could) be minimal.  The attacker could not obtain the BTC, and the user could, with effort, re-claim it.  In my understanding of things, blockchain.info wallet is basically of this type.

Interestingly, cloud storage and many other forms of data transmission and storage (e.g., messaging) are trivially and easily protected by these methods.  Brazil is on some kick to 'keep data local'.  This is absurd.  Data managed by UCE can be stored and transmitted across untrusted mediums safely and trivially.  There is a media blackout on mega.co.nz at this time, but the service they provide seems to be working well (and they take Bitcoin!)  I'm looking forward further developments by that organization.

In my opinion, a resistance to using UCE is attributable to about one thing and one thing only.  Namely, the provisioner of the service wants to, or needs to, have the option to compromise the data.

UCE is basically a local wallet. It has less privacy as you log in and it has less security as the server might change its mind and grab your key today.

UCE does not work for services that require to take control over your money. If you want to put your money into the books of an exchange or on a long time bet, it has to be taken out of your control and into the control of the website. If you don't want to pay for the blockchain every time you change your mind on your bids, you have to also grant the service control over your wallet, making UCE impossible.

Basically UCE is only an option for a pure wallet app. Anything else needs to be a service with a classical web wallet on top.

This is true, but we were discussing wallets fairly specifically.  You points about privacy are good ones.  Theft would take the form of a trojaned JS (or whatever) so it is not trivial and a inputs.io style theft would not be very possible.

I only trust what I can afford to lose to anyone.  A service which is demonstrably more complex to exploit will earn more of my trust and I'd potentially maintain a bigger balance there.  I use exclusively on-line wallet these days because the data rate needed to support a full node exceeds my monthly bandwidth allowance and my secure computer does not run Java.  I'd run something like Multibit (albeit with distaste) if I could compile it myself, but even then I'd still prefer an on-line wallet for spending money.  I don't mind hooking up to a low funded on-line wallet with my Android and Windows machines, and I personally am not terribly bothered by privacy issues for a majority of my activities.

I would prefer methods with a privacy focus out of principle.  As the coinjoin and other methods develop I'll support them for political reasons more than anything.

I was not very privacy aware when using bitcoin spinner on my android until a trading partner asked me about my trading history as the one address I had been using for 2 years was showing volumes well beyond my peak holdings in my secure wallet. That was when it dawned on me that whenever I would be out on the street with a loaded wallet, all of these former trade partners would be able to know exactly how well I charged my android wallet. Financial privacy matters. Trust me.

This will be solved in version 0.9 of bitcoin-qt with only need to download headers. Downloading entire chain will be optional.

Is there an expected release date for .9?

Thanks and thanks for all the updates... very helpful reading.

No.  Maybe a couple of months?

Hi Def Movies. Bleeding Edge Games. They are all larger than the blockchain. For now.

Thanks for this Mike. Even though I have been using the BitCoin-QT client for a few months now, I was always wondering how long it would take to download and why all of the blocks were useful.

So you are saying that even if it's not crucial and you could use other clients that do not require you to download the blockchain big ass file, the ideal and most secure scenareo is still using Bitcoin-QT with said big file downloaded and up to date??

Anyone who can run the reference software, and leave it running full time, is helping maintain the health of the Bitcoin network. Anyone who doesn't have the hardware, bandwidth, to do so is better off with Multibit or one of the other lightweight wallets. A further advantage of bitcoin-qt is that you can use Armory, the best wallet for securing large holdings. Of course, as the exchange rate increases even small holdings are "large" now  :)

What I'm trying to understand is how exactly will bitcoin work if everyone starts using bitcon QT with the updated 10gb limit.  What will happen to the old blocks?  Why would anyone store them anymore?  What's the incentive to store a terabyte of blocks (in the future)?  Will this mess up bitcoin?

Everyone who owns a bitcoin has an incentive to see the blockchain replicated and stored, because this has the only acceptable proof of their own holding. Terabyte disk storage is very cheap today and storage continues to get cheaper. The cost of helping ensure network health is the delay in initial synchronization and continued bandwidth requirements. People who don't mine, and just invest, should consider spending a small percentage of their bitcoin holding on hardware and bandwidth.

So I downloaded bootstrap.dat, 9GB+ from the torrent file on the source page, and I put it on my Bitcoin folder, but it's still so far away from completing the download. Am i doing something wrong? because its still 31 weeks behind.
I think im giving up on qt and i'll ulse Multi, I hope it looks the same now that i learned how to use the default client. Can u encrypt wallet.dat with it and so on?

But what if so few people start storing the full block chain, that somebody can mass install a fake one with fake info, thus ruining bitcoin?  I'm not sure this is the greatest thing int he world, sorta compromises a system like bitcoin...  It will just cause fewer people to own the complete blockchain...  Am I wrong on this?

Yes, you are probably wrong on this.

As the OP has famously said, Bitcoin could run just fine if only 4 or 5 copies of the blockchain existed.  Presumably it would be large entities who hold these copies and run the 'supernodes' required to process the incoming data and datasets.  He is probably right about this due to the way Bitcoin is designed, and it would certainly make it a lot easier to deploy 'red-listing' or whatever the preferred marketing term is these days.

This is not the evolutionary path I would like to see Bitcoin go down, but I'm just an ordinary user and enthusiast.

I assume  you've lost some of that hope now.   :o   j/k

"mass install a fake one with fake info"
Please read up about proof of work. The existing blockchain can't be faked without an improbable amount of computing power.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_work


This is gloom and doom. The evidence is that the increasing unit value of bitcoin is increasing the number of nodes. Whether they will be persistent for long periods is not known yet, but this uptick (likely driven by the rise from $120 to $800) is very encouraging.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=345258.0

It would make no difference. To propagate colourings/markings of coins, all you need is a UTXO set and to keep up with new blocks. You don't need access to the entire history of the chain.

Please don't assert things like that if you don't understand the technical details.

Can anyone tell me what to do

I actually meant to indicate that when a small number of entities have the resources (and freedom) necessary to operate the Bitcoin network infrastructure, it is more possible to enforce the use of all manners of constructs.  This would include any number of types of lists, personal identification mappings, authentications, etc.

I believe that one needs to parse and process the entire blockchain to get the UTXO set, or get it from someone who has, but that it is easily safe to do so (under the current implementation) so it's a moot point and a red herring.

My main point is that it seems to me that if I were running a business in an ordinary manner, I would want the UTXO set and other constraints to grow to what I could comfortably manage but which my lesser competition could not.  My similar sized peers would probably agree.  Between us, we could make the pool of people who's choice of software defines how the system operates a relatively small one.  Of course it would be helpful if users were mostly just running Multibit and such shifts would go largely unnoticed.

Chinese operators who cannot be uniformly pressured by authorities (a-la prism), alt-coins, and general knowledge on the part of the userbase may yet come to the rescue.  Hope so.  If not, my fall-back is, as always, to try to time things such that I get insanely rich off Bitcoin and move on to other more interesting things.

To make blacklists effective you want a small number of entities holding the blockchain so you can apply them directly there.

Please don't assert things like that if you don't understand the political and social details.

Testing [img=http://s16.postimg.org/6cqqjeept/DSCF6222.jpg] (http://postimg.org/image/6cqqjeept/)

Just to say that this problem is quite annoying. I have been syncing with my Mac for two days now and it's still at 207000 blocks. I have Time Warner and I usually download super fast so I don't think it's a connection issue. The Mac is an iMac 27 Mid 2011 with 8GB of RAM, so I don't think it's a computer problem. It's just the software which is freaking slow.

You can use a lightweight client instead, then.

Yes, I'd like to use Blockchain wallet.

The lightweight clients are not secure as the official client, unfortunately.

Good luck downloading blockhain on a new machine. We've long past comfortable dvd backup size, and almost past 16gb flash drive mark.

If devs would come up with solution which would at least halve blockchain, I bet people would donate larger sums as a "Thank you" message.

Fantasy.  Nobody donates, much less large sums.  This is a cute delusion.

While working as a volunteer core dev for years, I received a whopping...  ~30 BTC in donations.  https://blockchain.info/address/1BrufViLKnSWtuWGkryPsKsxonV2NQ7Tcj  The vast majority of that prior to 2013, leaving the monetary total well under $500 for years worth of work.

Donating will not bring down blockchain size.  Technically infeasible, even if donations work.  Which they don't.

I thought maaku got a fair amount of donations for a well defined project aimed at addressing some of the scaling issues?  No idea how that effort is progressing, but it seems like there is some interest there.

I personally donated a reasonable amount to retep's video.  The reason for this is that I thought that education was more important than specific realistic developments at that time.

It sounds from what gmaxwell (and you?) are saying, there is a possibility to retain a p2p architecture without necessarily holding the entire block chain.  Some architecture which could back-fill block contents as needed (and share them) seems like a theoretically viable structure as long as there was a means to discourage glue spam transactions.  Dunno if that's what is alluded to or not.  I should study it more.  Anyway, if 0.9 comes out with something which promotes the original principles of a user-operated infrastructure, I will donate to the principle architects and/or implementors directly and with reasonable generosity.  I'll not go through the Bitcoin Foundation as I disagree with the structure and their methods.

Quite surprising to hear that. You see little amounts donated for less useful stuff daily.
Anyway, this thing could be set up as a "kickstarter" of sorts.

You define your roadmap:
1)Do A
2)Do B
3)Do C

and add a donation pool to every key. If people decide to see feature C implemented beforehand - they donate towards it, and C takes priority. There should be a realistic multiplier applied to each objective of course.

It's still progressing.

According to a recent email conversation he's financially set, "through the end of January at least" and will be posting updates on the progress thus far shortly.

Apparently those who try it can, in fact, support their development via donations.

Time spent complaining that "donations don't work" in spite of evidence to the contrary would be better spent building a superior alternative to redonate.net, IMHO.

Without reading this topic, I have one contribution.

user Satoshi posted shortly before vanishing in 2010:

"I tested it on a slow 7 year old drive, where bandwidth and CPU were clearly not the bottleneck.  Initial download took 1 hour 20 minutes.

If it's taking a lot longer than that, certainly 24 hours, then it must be downloading from a very slow node, or your connection is much slower than around 15KB per sec (120kbps), or something else is wrong.  It would be nice to know what appears to be the bottleneck when that happens."


Given that every time I start bitcoin-qt and the connections indicator goes to healthy green, but the initial download takes more than 24 hours, I would say his original vision for how fast the download for new users should be, is not panning out, and we're not even at 1% of the paypal transaction volume yet.

So what exactly is the problem? that the block chain is growing faster than the average users broadband connection speed, or the network and software design is currently not able to deliver the data as fast as it should -- even after you poke holes in your firewall?

i can download a 1.5 gig torrent on 20 MB/s  broadband and usually get about 1.4MB/s  average
it should take me 30-60 min  to downlaod the blockchain max if its only a 16 gb file on my 2 TB disk

but a fresh install on a computer takes around 2 days  running 24/7  and my computers is fast and modern

not a major annoyance for me since i have a fast line and computer but ive had friends who took 1-2 weeks to download the blockchain in other countries over 3g  dongles etc and netbooks

i run the full client  and advise everyone i know  to do the  same although i have a multibit  wallet too which is easy to sync in a few seconds

anyone with low end tech or connection is going to have trouble downloading this entire chain unless it was somehow limited to the last 10GB of transactions and blocks before that could be recycle bined

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=204283.0

There is something of block chain size in the bitcoin paper.


So now when the bicoin has been running for almost five years, the size of the block chain could be as small as 5x4,2MB=21MB.

But it is not. It is almost 12500MB.

So what is true? Is it possible to reduce the size of a one block to 80 bytes?

What do you think?

Priorities seem to have shifted.

That was probably THE single biggest selling point to me when I read the whitepaper.  What do I think?  I think I've been chumped.

Well, there could be a simple solution for too big block chain.

The block chain is there to prevent the double spendings. Well. Before the very first one block in January 2009 there is no blocks or transactions. And still no double spendings have detected.

So lets start new bitcoin system and create a new first block. From the old bitcoin system we just copy all existing bitcoin-addresses to the new bitcoin system's first block and transact exactly same amount of bitcoins to those addresses. And then we just start the new Bitcoin system running.

The old bitcoin system, blocks and transactions can be forgetten.

That very first new block contains one transaction per one created address, so it is quite big, but still just a fraction of the size of the old bitcoin system's block chain.

This could work?

Congratulations! You have just discovered the principle of blockchain ultra-pruning. Check my sig for more.

It took me 2 and a half days for me to download and verify the block chain.  I would use and spv client such as Multibit but the features that armoury has are much more secure especially with the paper backup etc.  It would be nice if the download speed was faster then i could have all but one of my computers synced up - one for small transactions and the offline one of cold storage

bitaddress.org

you welcome.

Thx very good explanation. It's not a big deal today actually but tomorrow when blocks reaching 100 gb. We will be more focused these services.

I am there, nicely done site, however since I am such a layman, how do I know you dont have a copy of the private key generated or just a screenshot would do, other than you saying you dont...

All this software tech is confusing, learning as fast as I can :)
Paper wallets are good if I could generate keys in my head, or even had the patience to write them down way to long. I just do not get numbers, words are fine.

OH to make it fit I had to print in landscape. must be a HD page.

The thing about that site (not mine, everybody uses it) is that all key generation is done in your browser. So no info is sent over the wire, but you don't have to trust it's authors - you can (and should) make double sure you are safe, not only from the site owners but also from possible trojans or viruses on your comp:

save the complete site, open it on some computer with no internet connection, generate addresses and print them out, then you can format the HD of that computer if you are paranoid or just reboot it to clean up temporary information.

Thank you so much :)

Wonderful easy way ! secure wallet keys, from a generator that may have a set code to the keys it will make ,,, I know, to paranoid, I do know any single 0 or 1 bit words ect over wire are saved somewhere.
Nothing in the matrix is secure... nothing, Only what is in my head is safe for now.
Until the fingernails, teeth, eyes, start getting messed with. hahaha

I will do as you recommended thank you !

OH ! Thanks to _-=piramida=-_ for the site and source code. Good Stuff
freddy

Can anyone answer me this?

Do you need to download the whole blockchain to make use of advanced scripting features of Bitcoin? I'm talking about m-of-n addresses mostly.

ofc  ;D

No, you don't.

good job. i learn something useful from this discussion

I've seen a few torrents with a backup of the blockchain.

It might be good to have a annual backup made check summed then made available on numerous mirrors.
The blocks would still be available peer2peer(hopefully) but the centralized backup could ensure the blockchains retention(if a large part of the btc swarm elect to only use recent blocks.)
I know that when I have downloaded blocks, my 25mbps connection(much weaker than a lot of peoples) is never fully utilized.

donation of that size may work from in a quasi Seigniorage manner. If enough good dev is done due a sufficiently large following, the 30 coins at 10K each may eventuate, thus being 300K which would probably cover the dev cost.

However you have to wait, to see the net effect of combined dev via price discovery a few years down the track.

[it is in the interests of those with larger holding to donate or undertake dev as well]

very very good ... tnx  ::)

Yes, seems like problems are getting solved. I am hopeful too...

So I just built my new Hack Pro - it's a beast. And for the past two days now I've been trying to synchronize Bitcoin QT and I'm at about 10%.
I figured I'd see what Bitcointalk would say about it, and I wondered if anyone ever thought that there might be a time when the blockchain might get too ridiculously large, and what was my surprise to see this thread as the first thread listed when I logged in!

K, I'm going to go back and read it now.

As rapidly increasing Bitcoin utilization causes bloat and complexity, centralization is a natural consequence.  Already we see centralized constructs reached for as a problem solving means since it is the quickest and most obvious way to solve many problems.  (Leveraging state issued passports and SSL cert authorities for instance.)

I posit that a more healthy way to go is to jealously and rigorously guard against centralization at a 'first tier' or 'core' or 'native' level.  And to do this by actively embracing and facilitating centralization at a 2nd tier level.  This to take the load of growth as well as the risk of additional bells and whistles at this second tier level where failure does not result in a collapse of the entire solution.

Ultimately what I want is an unassailable 'native' Bitcoin which looks much like we see today.  I'll keep the bulk of my value in deep off-line storage relying on nothing more than the 'first tier' which is light weight and can realistically be operated by independent enthusiast who risk little capital by operating the system.

For general day-in/day-out use I'll choose a handful of promising 'second tier' organizations who seem to be trustworthy and risk a certain fraction of my wealth with them.  Currently I do this with Coinbase and Blockchain.info for instance.  If they fold or get shut down I may lose, but I lose no more than I choose to risk and my nest-egg is safe with my plain old no-frills deep storage wallet which I rarely dig into.

The alternate of trying to support an economy which could basically need to grow without limits in a native 'first tier' Bitcoin layer is very dangerous and I believe almost certain to fail.  And fail because it will almost certainly centralize out of necessity and thus become more prone to successful attack.

A multi-tiered system still relies on Bitcoin as the foundation upon which it rests, and is still available in native form when really needed so evolving in that direction is not 'selling out'.  It's simply a logical way to scale and grow while remaining hardened against centralization and the brittleness and risks that that condition brings.

there will be always war between hackers and programmers :)

Bitcoin will uprgade, and those who use boitcoin network will learn how to do it better.

Thanks everyone. Learning a lot from this thread.

Just for the reference - finally downloaded the whole blockchain tonight.

So, for Feb. 26, 2014 we have:

# of blocks: 287930
19.267088 GB in .blocks folder.

Soon approaching 20Gb.

Thanks for the information about SPV mike. Great effort  :)

use this: [ANN] Bitcoin blockchain data torrent  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=145386.0)

at this day, i have re-installed a bitcoin-QT on a machine : 17,5Go take by the blochchain folder (that i have separated from the bitcoin folder).
well, with 500Go of hard drive (portable PC), it's not a big deal... and 24h to retrieve the blockchain, you must have a 10MBit/s to do that.

20GB @ 1Mbit = 45 hours - in theory - in real it could be 5 hours on 10mbit - the only problem is fast CPU&enough RAM, no other things doing and fast (not busy HDD) - so lets say 6-10 hours on slow 3yo PC

So we just need much more 1Gbit nodes - I plan to get 3 in EU + 2 in US - June??
And then it only depends on CPU ...

20*8*1024/1/3600=45 (https://www.google.com/search?q=20*8*100%2F3600#q=20*8*1024%2F1%2F3600)

You can replace "1" with other number of megabits
20*8*1024/1/3600=45

explanation:
20GB*8(byte to bits)*1024(GB to MB)/1(conn speed)/3600(seconds to hours)=45

So IMHO - less full nodes (not every user needs full blockchain - webwallits, light clients, other projects, offline transactions ...) and 100/100 Mbit is standard for servers - so again - i c no problem.
Like 1hour to sync - some mirrors i am syncing 2 days on 1 Gbit ... - but I do it once a 4 years?

what about electrum how does this compare?

My two bits on blockchain size, 20gb at a time when you will have trouble buying a 1tb drive.
Seems to be scaled well enuf. 2tb and up are all the rage now. 20gb is nothing.

Network speed and bandwidth is another story. We are way behind on that. By now home users should be at OC3 capability.
We are far far behind that. Wireless ?? speeds/bandwidth are a joke.

Blockchain is designed well. Well thought out.

1 and 2 TB drives IF (and big IF) you're assuming people prefer archaic rotating hard disks. For a LOT of applications people have moved to solid state drives. Having a 20GB mess of junk on my 400GB SSD is EXPENSIVE.

If Bitcoin is to attract the masses, we (collectively) cannot assume that everyone uses a computer the same way.

For me, the blockchain has gotten STUPID the past year and a half.

You can use electrum without full chain, but if you want to download full chain it is always the same size for any client :)
(size growing constantly)

There are ways to get around the stupid small size of the SSD's. Blockchain for some reason with the OLD Stupid stuff, seems not a issue at all.

Thanks! Much appreciated!

I think most people here are either in IT or know there way around a computer. So, I know you know how to deal with this, as do I.

I guess my point really was that my father/mother/uncle/aunt wouldn't, and if we can't make bitcoin approachable for the non-techie then bitcoin has failed.

I'm hopeful since alternative clients exist, and hopefully they take off. But, the point still remains that Bitcoin-Qt is "marketed" as the "official" client and is the one most people start with. First impressions are very important.

Sell em on multibit, it rips thru the blockchain sync, in seconds.
Selling a faster wallet type is your job.

So much info. ::)

"Block chain size/storage and slow downloads for new users"

IMO - any new game like example Thief need about 25gb... so you are telling me blockchain size is huge and scary?
in next 5 years games will weight 100gb perhaps. Till 1995 biggest game I had was recorded on two 1.4mb disks...

so do not tell me anything about blockchain size.
It is SMALL. and maybe one day it will be big.

You can buy 1TB HDD for less than 100$ ...
Don't tell me Blockchain is big.

Anyway. I haven't got blockchain on my pc and I am still bitcoin user. How come? ( don't anwer, we all know :P )

You do not need qt to be a bitcoiner.

Anyway. I haven't got blockchain on my pc and I am still bitcoin user. How come? ( don't anwer, we all know Tongue )

You do not need qt to be a bitcoiner.

I don't have PayPal's database on my computer, but I'm a PayPal users.  Nor do I have a printing press, but I'm a $USD user.

One of the most interesting things about Bitcoin in the early days was that my router served as a perfectly adequate first-class peer in what was then a Peer-2-Peer solution.  I had to rely on nobody but myself to fully validate transactions.

Everyone (or at least a fraction of us who have some comprehension of computer science) knew that there would be a shift here.  It remains an open question if the end result looks more like early Bitcoin or more like a significantly centralized construct like our mainstream banking solution.  Time will tell.

Here is an example of the point I'm making -> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=537748.0

Until either Bitcoin Core doesn't take forever and a day to sync, or it stops being the "official" client, then we'll see posts like this with an ever increasing frequency.

Perhaps the bitcoin.org site could only reference the "Bitcoin Core" app under the "developers" section, and for the "getting started" only reference wallets that don't need the full block chain. Just a thought.

The idea you also realize the need for a very long time

Hmm ... IMO if you are begginier in bitcoin world you should 1st of all try bitcoin core. And then you may think about  smaller weight clients.

Core is probably the best desktop wallet out there.

That would be amazing.

Current client development is so early beta or even alpha. We will laught about it in couple years.

 :-* i don't laugh about my P2P file sharing system ... since 15 years in less than v1.00 (emule 0.50a).

I have been trying to figure out how to get some active connections to a bitcoin network and it won't work. I've tried changing the IP and also the port and nothing is working. I'm 266 weeks behind and i need this done asap. Anyone who could help it would be greatly appreciated thank you.

tried with bootstrap.dat file ?

really good info ;D thanks for the update :D :D :D :D

Thanks for sharing.

really helped a lot .

and what is good idea in your opinion? Can you expand your though to let us understand more??

That would be nice.

And back to the topic:
"Block chain size/storage and slow downloads for new users"

... new users do not need to download a blockcian. They can use clients without them....

I must say I do not remember when I transfer any BTC via qt..

I am using Android Wallet day by day and it works too fine to change.

if old blocks are deleted, what would happen to the BTCs in wallets that were lost in the initial years?

I was thinking to cut the chain down in size would be to:

1. Delete any BTC addresses that has less than .001 BTC. Add a merge function button in the wallet that moves any BTC too small together. Let everyone know the chain will restart and only keep btc addresses over .001 in the new chain.

2. The blockchain is filled with the same BTC bouncing around everywhere, do we really need to keep that information, just delete it and keep the current address amounts.

That should cut down the size dramatically and it could be done once a year. Just implementing #2 would be most helpful, #1 would also be helpful but not necessary.



   

Thanks for providing information.... 8) 8)

The problem is you can't  reliably notify everyone so you'd end up deleting many addresses with less than. 001. Plus you're thinking like an American. You know that $0.50 is a helluva lot of money in other countries?

Plus in 10 years even you might think 0.001 is a lot.

Removing addresses is a bad idea, see previous post.

Developing a really good bitcoin blockchain compression would be the way to go.
Possibly making a core client that could selectively download only relevant blocks from the swarm.
Allow nodes to be nodes and end users to be just end users.
Having every end user download the whole blockchain is more of a burden on the nodes than letting them download only blocks they need.

Look not to understand completely

i wish you could just cut out early blocks of the chain

Always wanted to ask this; Is it true that the more bitcoin nodes there are, the faster transactions get confirmed?

No.
The inclusion of new blocks is handled by miners.
Blocks occur once every 10 minutes, this doesn't change with more miners.
The nodes only distribute the blocks once the miners created them.

I can catch up to early 2012 quite quickly, and the whole wad can easily be stored on a thumb drive.  In short, the early blocks are not a problem from a size or complexity perspective.  Unfortunately this gave people a false sense of hope for the trajectory and fundamental operational principles of Bitcoin back in those early times.  Even without expanding the 1MB block size, when the system became more highly used some annoyances and potential problems started to appear.

The solution under discussion here is basically a change to how Bitcoin worked back in the early days.  Effectively one no longer autonomously verifies their ownership but relies on a combination of other categorically different actors and probabilistic estimates of strength (and global system function.)  Works fine (currently) and solves the scaling issues nicely for most people.  But it is NOT equivalent to running a transfer node and participating in strengthening the system, and arguably not even close.

Ok, so what will help make transaction confirmation faster?

-Thanks.

It is 10 mins between blocks.
If you include a fee with your trasaction you increase the chances of getting included in the next block.

Just because block generation is 10 mins does not mean you will have to wait 10 mins.
You could send out your transaction 1 minute before block gen and if you include a fee it could be in the next block.

also, the 10 minutes per block is the target. Due to the constant increase in hashing power, block generation is usually less than 10 minutes.

-Thanks.

Thanks for the info.

No.  Blocks are created with an average time between blocks of 10 minutes.  Nothing changes that in the long run.

Thank you for your explanation. It becomes clearly to me than before.
Thanks=) ;D

Thank Mike for a detailed explanation, I would like to ask a question, multi-threaded downloads take into account all the problems encountered by customers, then, is to design an appropriate model to meet the needs of different groups of people?

Addresses with <.001, or even .00000001 make up the most important part of the blockchain for those who invision BTC micro payments as the solution to problems like spam email

There is a similar case to be made for the history of every coin ever transacted. You and I couldn't care less a about that info, but regulators find it an attractive feature so if you want regulators to like BTC then you will want that info available.

I know nada about how the network works but I'll bet on the smart guys here finding a solution that does not involve every casual user downloading the entire blockchain onto their little mom&pop chromebook. There is enough value being created by BTC to solve all these problems. There will be more fees and I'll bet they will total close to 2% of every transaction with 5yrs. small price to pay for all the other benefits.

You won't need the whole blockchain, or confirmations, or 51 character private keys. That will be managed by whatever replaces Visa & Mastercard (unless they are more flexible then I predict).

Rant over.

This is the kind of stuff that would make blockchain heavier...


They can already use an SPV or other lightweight wallet, and have a few to choose from.



Then you will need to place as much trust in those "managers" of your BTC, as you currently often have to do with fiat. What's the point of having BTC if you are going to be using it in a way that will let others easily deprive you of it?

There is plenty of space for UX to improve (and it has already vastly improved), but you can't have your cake and eat it too.

My Bitcoin Core-64 keeps having to rebuild the blockchain.  Second day in a row I've had to rebuild it.

Great.  When it finished it gave an I/O error and asked if I wanted to re-load the blockchain again.  I'm so sick of this shit....

I agree with you. I *do* enjoy the new freedom and control . But I know that, if I want BTC to reach it's full potential, there are 2 things that will contribute significantly:

1) regulators have to tolerate the system
2) 'mom & pop' have to use BTC (even if they dont understand it and couldnt care less about it).

2% fee's will solve all the BTC problems: slow-confirmation-risk, seller-risk, etc. Mom&Pop will use it. *Not* because BTC is so great but because there is no reason not to use it (a bit like PayPal). Similarly, BTC brokers need to have mandatory reporting to the IRS just like stock brokers. This will keep the gov't happy.

I WANT that to happen so we can all continue to enjoy our new (and growing) economic freedoms. I dont see this as black-or-white: (freedom vs. regulation) but rather a mix that moves in the right direction. Same thing happened with the internet. Providers have lots of control, take big fee's and have to give up data to the gov't when asked. But look at the freedoms gained......right? Huge!

So, just like the revolution in "how we get information".....I'm hoping for a similar revolution in how we get/use/transfer 'value'

With a 2% fee there is absolutely no reason to use it.  Merchants gain nothing but added complexity and expense.  They can simply keep using PayPal.  The largest advantage for merchants is a significant boost to their net margins by the removal of the 2% overhead by bypassing the credit card network.  It makes no sense to bypass the credit card network to pay the same amount in fees to a different third party.  Merchant adoption would be essentially zero.

Not entirely. Merchants may adopt it at 2% for the same reason they adopt AMEX at 3%.

But even if we agree that 2% *is* the limit and that merchants have no reason to adopt..... that doesn't mean we are back to 0%.

 we have a zone of possible agreement between 0-2% of most consumer transactions. All that value is created by BTC. We'll see how much gets claimed by the consumer, by the seller, and how much by the middle men. It will (i.e. should) depend on who has a better alternative to adoption.

block chain too big come on guys.

so im having this noob question i started the gui miner a few day ago...and im using slush pool and an account on bitcoin.cz....and it says there shares and score and mhash...but always blocks 0 ...is that a problem or something cause i dont know and also i`ve been told that i should request a flag for my video board its nothing big (ati radeon hd 4350)...

also if any` knows if i can add more workers on my account from mining.bitcoin.cz..and if yes how

Just chant "Moore's Law, Moore's Law, ..." and everything will be fine.  It's a time-honored engineering solution in Bitcoinland.  Among the 99.99% of us who do no actual engineering at least.  And those who do seem content to have the others be so easily placated.

I was terribly annoying to download all those blocks.
Thanks for the tip, I'll pass this on to my friends.

The blockchain size becomes a issue for my disk.

For a solution for this to work for everyone with or without hdd space. Blockchain should be on the cloud and a small index file downloaded to ones system and then qt wallet for computer or mobile phone or tablet can easily be updated and a small amount of data to be put on system. This would not only free up space on peoples computers but it would also allow faster transactions to go though the network. A lot can be done to improve services and I disagree for new users to be penalised because their new to the services. What happens if 1 million new business want to start accepting it for their business and they have to wait ages to download the blockchain and update their wallets. It wouldn't work out it would  deter more people from using it.

No the solution is to use a SPV client.  The network is already the "cloud".  Satoshi solved this problem a year before the genesis block was minted and people keep trying to come up with inferior "solutions".

If you want to be a full node there is no substitute for the (pruned) blockchain.   You don't need to be a full node, you can operate as an SPV client instead.  There is no reason to try and combine the both into a solution which takes the worst elements of each and accomplishes nothing.

Never even heard of a SPV client. I understand partly it being in the cloud but what I  meant was for more services on the cloud to speed things up than it currently is and to also reduce the amount of space used. If this is the case using SPV client you are on about maybe you can point me in the direction to one or details about it. As I would be interested in such things as always looking for something light weight and easy going.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Thin_Client_Security#Simplified_Payment_Verification_.28SPV.29

Looking at Electrum can you import wallets on this using private key. Is it the same as just doing it on btc qt import ect?

I just tried Multibit, but it won't correctly load the funds on my addresses.

I was looking at that one but I have found the same problems. Loads up but when trying to import it gets stuck or seems to crash on me. Going to try a few more out and see if I can come to a solution of a light weight wallet.

 "SPV wallets will always be fast no matter how popular Bitcoin gets." why do you think so???? ??? come on, it will be like any other wallets , no difference

Bitcoin core requires user to download full blockchain which takes a long time. However,  SPV wallets do not need to download any blocks.

is blockchain most secure wallet?

No, your computer can be compromised and your block chain account can be hacked. Offline paper wallet is the most secure.

bc.i wallet is better than exchange ones, but not as good as offline wallet and paper wallet.

what about electrum?

The two solutions (electrum and SPV) strike me as more or less equivalent.  In both situations the user is not a peer in the (supposedly) peer-2-peer network.  The user relies on people who are peers, but the 'server' cannot cheat them.  Or at least not easily and not at this point.  The userbase using either solution does not really add much of anything aside from body-count to the solution.

Seems to me that Bitcoin is on the trajectory of moving toward being not much more or much less 'peer-2-peer' than the mainstream banking system where banks who have the resources peer with one another to create a system (and users have debit cards and such.)  Certainly that would be the case if the transaction rate is increased significantly (and Bitcoin achieves and maintains popularity.)  Some years ago I suggested that Bitcoin marketing starts to move away from the 'peer-2-peer' label as a sales pitch.  This suggestion was met with the expected level of animosity.  Eventually 'the powers that be' seem to have taken my advice to some extent however.  Not that Bitcoin won't still have advantages (chiefly, the potential absence of counter-party risk) but many of the earlier sales pitches will prove to be early hot air.

USB flash disk stuffed in your butt crack is probably the most secure wallet..

uSD might be more comfortable, but whatever floats your boat I guess.

what about electrum?

Very good explanation.

If he wanted to store USD and not bitcoins, sure.

The currency appreciation of the space is very large

I think the problem here is not the size of the blockchain itself. The problem is how the blockchain is handled.

While using the client I found several problems. The first problem is that the client wastes bandwidth by downloading blocks that it already has. I suspect the P2P protocol does not have provision for a node telling "I already have block X, please send me blocks A, B and Z instead". I can see this problem in the debug.log file which is littered by "ERROR: ProcessBlock() : already have block X" where X runs from a certain number consecutively for several such messages then it jumps and again runs consecutively. I think this not only wastes the bandwidth but also the time because the other nodes spend time sending these useless blocks instead of blocks that make progress. This happens pretty frequently at my node which is connected behind a firewall.

The second problem is the "Reading the list of blocks" and "Validating blocks" actions which takes a lot of time. Well, my question is why the client needs to "read the list of blocks" and "validate the blocks" every time it starts up. Well, the "read the list of blocks" is not taking that much time but "validate the blocks" is 10 minute operation. You know, once the blocks are validated, why they need to be revalidated at every program startup ?

The third problem is that the client is "jumping over the data like goat over cemetery" while doing these two actions. This is MUCH SLOWER than reading the data in sequence. Why it needs to jump over the data so much? Maybe implement some caching?

The fourth problem is why the program splits the blockchain into 125 MB chunks? That is inefficient in Windows where opening and closing a file is pretty expensive operation. In my blockchain directory the first 10 GB are stored in 5 files (well, in fact 10 because I need to count the revXXXXX files) because they were downloaded by a 0.6.3 BETA client but the remaining 9 GB is spread over 75 files. Is there a way to reconfigure these storage parameters? And once I change them, is there a way to tell the client to repackage the blockchain so it is stored according to my wishes? I prefer "few large files" over "many small files" on Windows because "many small files" is inefficient.

A similar problem is with the "chainstate" data which is only 0.5 GB but is littered into 229 files. Well, that might not be your fault as I understand that these fileis actually belong to some sort of general purpose database which was recently replaced and actually is much faster now but I believe that this data could be handled more efficiently if it was in a single file (maybe developing a special purpose database?)

Also regarding the size of the blockchain, there are two things that should be done. The first thing is that the coinbase transaction can be as big as the miner wants (and some coinbase transactions weight few tens of KB, storing various stuff, see "Hidden Surprises in Bitcoin Blockchain" search on Google and especially this blog (http://www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks-photographs.html)) so putting a limit to it for example 128 or even 64 bytes would be good (but the limit should not be too small because otherwise we could run into a bunch of blocks with no solution). And the second thing would be when storing the blockchain, extract the addresses and especially the public keys out of the block data, store them into some sort of index file and in the block data replace them with indices. That could reduce the size of the stored blockchain pretty significantly.

Hi All,
  I am new to bitcoin, new to bitcointalk and to cryptocurrency in general, so let me apologize in advance if this info appears elsewhere.

  I had the slow blockchain update problem (fast computer, high bandwidth connection) and then I noticed something, maybe nothing, hope it helps:

  Try opening Bitcoin Core, go to Help / Debug Window / Network Traffic. When Core is first opened, it updates like crazy. After about fifteen minutes the network traffic drops to almost nada. This is when my node seems "stuck". All I have to do is exit Core, restart it, and as soon as it has active connection it starts updating like gangbusters again. Had to do this several times to get the whole blockchain, but it was worth it. Maybe it will work for some other folks, hope so.

  I'm running v0.9.2.1-g354c0f3-beta (64-bit) on Win8.1, I also have an Ubuntu 14.04 box that runs pretty much 24/7 and I'd like to run a fulltime nodes on it, partly because of the concerns voiced by Mike and others regarding the dwindling number of nodes and how that affects the decentralized nature of bitcoin. It seems like a damn good idea, bitcoin, and I plan to hang on for as long as the Powers That Be allow me to.

  Cheers, and Hope This Helps.



  

Well there is room for improvement but the client doesn't use blocks the way you think it does so that leads to a lot of incorrect conclusions.


There are messages for requesting specific blocks and ranges of blocks.  The client uses them.  The issue may be a misbehaving client on the other end.  Say you request block X to Z from client A and get no response.  So you request block X to Z from client B.  Client B responds and you process those blocks.  At some point client A starts sending you blocks X to Z which you now already have.  If you find a specific bug where YOUR client is requesting blocks it already has be sure to report it but make sure it is actually a bug.


It doesn't validate all of them.  It is done to ensure there has been no database corruption (possibly during the prior close due to a power failure).  It only checks a limited number of the most recent blocks.  You can from the config file adjust how many blocks to check and how detailed of a check to perform.  You can even set this to zero blocks if you like.


There is a cache.  It is called the UTXO.  Block are only used to create and update the UTXO.  All validation of new txns and blocks is done against the UTXO.  Once a block is written to the disk other than for responding to block requests from other peers (or updating the UTXO in a reorg) they aren't used by your client.


Older blocks are not needed except to provide blocks to peers who are bootstrapping.   Saying you prefer large files over small files in all cases is a dubious request.


Reinventing the wheel?  The chainstate is stored in leveldb which is accepted as an incredibly lightweight and very fast key pair database.  It is doubtful you would design an alternative custom database with similar functionality that outperforms leveldb.  Also even if you could would the development time be worth reinventing the wheel rather than improving the actual client?

  The coinbase txns of all blocks represent <0.003% of the blockchain.  The size is already limited by general limits on the size of ScriptSigs for all transactions.  Seems a dubious use case.


That cache is called the UTXO (the chainstate folder you dislike so much).  Blocks are used to build the UTXO in a trustless manner.  They aren't used to process or validate new blocks and transactions.   The raw blocks are just used to bootstrap new nodes so they too can build the UTXO in a trustless manner.

Thank you for the clarifications.


... and at this time my client would tell the client A to stop sending the blocks and send me bunch of others.


How about marking the stored block chain as good after the client properly exits and then at the startup look for this mark and do the check only if the mark is not there?


Good to know. But why it is then accessing the disk so much? I am using the latest client. True, the speed went waaaaaaaaaaay up from the 0.6.x I was using before but still it touches the disk quite a bit.


Well, maybe it might seem dubious in your eyes but you cannot be sure if there isn't a valid reason on my side for the request. It would be nice if I could control that stuff.


Good point. Thank you for pointing this out. One other question for me to ask would be "how about improving the leveldb so others can benefit from it as well?".


Good to know. Thank you. I did not do much statistics but


Maybe I might start liking the UTXO and stuff and disliking Windows instead (the client is running on Windows). I now remember that Windows is doing pretty crappy job at managing the disk and the files on it. Once I find the time for this, I will try to run the thing on (modern) Linux and see what happens.

Now I am starting to think that Windows is pretty crappy system for a task like this. I do know its disk cache sucks a lot. I also now remembered that recently I realized that the Windows's filesystem also sucks a lot (when compared with Linux filesystems) (have you ever tried to defragment NTFS and make sure that it really is defragmented? That is the thing I now remember doing recently and realizing it to be pretty impossible and concluding that NTFS sucks). Now I think that the leveldb guys and you, Bitcoin guys did an admirable job at forcing the stupid Windows to behave under such load (20+ GB of growing data + 0.5 GB of heavily updated data).

N00b question and a comment: Now that I have the entire blockchain downloaded and verified on my Windows box, can I simply shoot it over to a Linux box (under the Linux bitcoin core software, of course) to get a jump on things, or do I have to download/verify it separately there? Are the blockchain data file formats the same? thanx.


After the past few weeks running Windows 8.1 (NTFS) and Ubuntu 14.04 (ext4), both for the first time, doing some of the same disk intensive tasks, I can virtually guarantee that the Linux filesystem is enormously faster and more efficient. Good luck with your experiments!

The first time I downloaded the blockchain (friend that introduced me to bitcoin insisted I run a full-node), it took my computer a little over a day and a half to download.  The last time I had to re-index my blockchain file (a couple of weeks ago) it took over 3 days!  Granted I have a few things running on the machine and it isn't exactly the New Kid on the Block, but sheesh.

It always takes me a lot of time but if i close the wallet only if it is necessary than the next time i download the block chain it does not take me so much time ,but i have to admit at first it took me 3 days non stop downloading....

I use multibit, makes life a lot easier. Bitcoin-Qt is a pain to add new wallets / prove keys without going through every single block which can take days if you're lucky that it doesn't crash. Hopefully multibit expands to other altcoins soon

Even though multibit is a light client, it does not offer the full features bitcoin-qt offers. There are different pros and cons for each of them, if you are just a regular user, only sending and receiving coins, multibit is recommended. If you require more features, bitcoin-qt is better.

Once link.

blockchain.info

No fees, or so they claim. Completely online.

Posted From bitcointalk.org Android App

well noted and thx

my blockchain is very slow too and use up alot of memory i want to know what its for tho  :-\

Your bitcoin core will sync up to 20+GB of data. It will verify blocks and sync the blockchain. Since the blockchain have 20+GB, it will take sometime, depending on you and your peers internet speed. Your bitcoin directory will be filled with transactions from the past and after syncing, you can see the balance and use it.

If you have a good network speed or using seedbox, is it better to download Bootstrap.dat and copying it to BTC directory and syncing than syncing directly from network?
Kindly,
       MZ

bootstrap.dat is the best way.

What if blocks included, along with the list of new transactions, the hash of the unspent transactions database? (the state that the blockchain was in during the previous block)

This way, light clients could request the unspend transactions database from full clients.

eg.

Block A has hash ABC
balances at this block:
Bob: 1, Alice: 2, Charlie: 3

Block B has hash DEF
included in the block (as an optional parameter):
Block A's UTXO hash: B1A2C3

then, if a light client needs to spin up, it can just request the UTXO db from a few fat clients if they have it, validate it against the blockchain, and process the transactions from there.

I have to wonder if at some point in the future we are going to start running short of FAT clients to send requests to as their numbers diminish and consequently the load on them increases, itself causing people to switch. Perhaps the mining methodology needs to be extended to encourage people to serve the whole blockchain where possible.

What exactly does the bootstrap.dat file contain? Is it simply an archive of the blockchain itself?

an image of the last  block I would think.  Has all the data all wrapped in one small package to actual size.

bootstrap.dat contains all blocks.  See this thread to describe how to torrent and use it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=145386.0

Yes. The thread contains all info. In short, it contains Blockchain data - blocks.

Kindly,
       MZ

thank you for informations 8)

Many thanks for the update lol. ;D

Thank you for the updates guys

What a specific and clear explanation. Thank you for writing this and provide such good information to us. 

Hi, if somebody want blockchain from yesterday, i share it via torrent (i have very fast 150Mb mb upload)...
LINK: http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/10928915/Bitcoin_blocks_blockchain_chainstate_2014-08-29.zip
or torrent file https://mega.co.nz/#!lIdCiCpb!RBnHZ8QvHCsjXp8KG2KT8tTc4StDSL_IZ2DZS2KonpU -> torrent

The Devs are trying to compressing it into <=20 GB . I think if they are doing it, they will have to remove many blocks. I think it will be done soon!

  ~~MZ~~

Thank you for update. Many appreciation for the efforts.

I really don't know what to do . I like Bitcoin core .. but that blockchain size downloading takes for ever  :o  :o so should I go with blockchain.info or take Multibit ? what's the safest ? thanks

is there a way to make bitcoin blocks minimum?

Both solutions leave your secret key under your control.  In theory.  I use blockchain.info because last I looked Multibit required a Java install which is not available for my secure platform and which I don't even feel comfortable installing on my non-secure Windows machine.  To much bloat, opacity, and weirdness with that framework for my tastes.  I'm not a frequent Bitcoin user and hope that if blockchain.info's JS infrastructure is compromised, someone would note it in code before I got screwed.  I don't think I've done a transaction since the selling opportunity early in the year, though, and have not kept up on things lately.

Yes. That's right! But is blockchain.info really secure? It is web wallet, so it might get hacked any time. IMO it is better to use Mutlibit HD which is a little better than Multibit. Remember, it is in Beta stage, so if you want a stable one, you can use Multibit. If you can't install Java, you can use Electrum. :)


Now there is no option to make it. If you can't download whole blocks, then use other wallets like Multibit, Electrum or any web wallet(not recommended) such as Blockchain.info, Coinbase, Hive etc...

  ~~MZ~~

If blockchain.info got hacked or shut down without warning one should still not lose their bitcoins as long as they've followed the fairly simple procedures to keep a hold of their private keys.  Nor can the attacker necessarily get the user's bitcoins because (in theory) blockchain.info themselves do NOT have the private key.

What an attacker, or a corrupt management, could do would be to start sending out a bogus javascript which would steal one's password and thus make it so that blockchain info could access the private keys.  As I said earlier, I would hope that this form of failure would effect relatively few people before it was detected.

The most legitimate problem with blockchain.info is, in my opinion, that the javascript interpreter which is normally part of the user's browser could be exploited.  Or other exploits of the host platform could present problems.  Naturally this could impact things besides web-wallets of course though.

It is worth note that historically most 'web wallets' did NOT follow the model pioneered by blockchain.info.  And of course as we know an amazing number of such 'services' ended up stealing the user's Bitcoins.  Surprise, surprise.  I would not consider a web wallet that did not meet or exceed blockchain.info's standards.

There is a huge difference between blockchain.info wallet and any other wallets. Some of the online wallet service are shared wallet which means you do not control the private key. You can request blockchain.info to send you a copy of your wallet and you could also export the private key. On blockchain.info, the person controlling the private key is only you, they have no access of the private key. You can enable two factor authentication for a better security however.

Thanks for this Mike. Even though I have been using the BitCoin-QT client for a few months now, I was always wondering how long it would take to download and why all of the blocks were useful.

thank you for informations.... very well explained

How many can i write on this setting ?

-maxorphanblocks=<n>

Because, my new Bitcoin 0.9.3 is stuck on 751 orphan blocks ... (1 years and 10 week to wait ... since 24h ... and i have restart bitcoin core many time to avoid orphan download).

I understand, now, why people don't use the "nodes" feature of bitcoin core ... if orphan are not erased from bitcoin blockchain.

it's a new pollution for noobs ... ? Generate orphan block to kill nodes job ... ?

OK Understand ... decrease MAXCONNEXION to 3 ... and blockchain flow correctly.
if you don't do this ... you always have ORPHAN block (more than 751 in memory) ... and synchro. don't work (i wait since 2 days with a freshly 0.9.3 installed).

please, correct this !  :-[

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img913/346/d4S8Z4.jpg

Need to restart 2 times (stuck with no downloads of blocks) ... need to decrease connexion to 2 (if you have more ORPHAN BLOCKS writed on debuglog file).

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img537/5665/Cl5qht.jpg

I use "bartail" to view a dynamic updated debuglog in real time.
http://geekswithblogs.net/robz/archive/2008/05/09/baretail---log-file-monitoring-tool.aspx

Left it running overnight, still not finished. :D
I must add that this is a fresh install.

Too angry for me ... i choose the torrent source file instead  :(

https://bitcoin.org/bin/blockchain/ (and click on the .TORRENT file = 21Gb)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=145386.0

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img674/7633/VedKeg.jpg

And after the download of the bootstrap.dat ... the bitcoin core job to extract all to recreate the block folder (in blockchain folder).

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img905/5618/JGoysE.jpg

"Deleting" old blocks is required, it should be easy to implement. Only require to clients remember up to 4 levels of transaction tree history. Now its like 300 000 levels of transaction tree required no idea why.
It would be great for bitcoin adoption

It took me 23 hours to add fully functional bt-core on my MAC. Downloaded bootstrap.dat and synchronised with network. Macbook is new, but process was so slow.

If you don't need the full functions, consider getting a light weight Bitcoin client. Full node requires CPU to verify blocks and memory space. They can be reduced by using a lightweight wallet as you do not need that much hard disk space because you do not need to download blocks. This is also the fastest.

If I use Multibit, I assume I am  not contributing to the bitcoin network by allowing others to connect to me and download new blocks from each other. Wouldn't this become an issue if the majority of the users started to use an SPV client?

thanks for update

yes ... but, it's the final deal.
pool and miner must have a strong source for the block verification.

so, if you have strong miner, you always have strong complete source of blockchain at the end.

Great! Thanks guys for this thread ;)

Thx for your explain
So helpfull

Not really, merchants would still be relying on full nodes to process payment as SPV clients isn't as secure as Bitcoin core. There will also be some people willing to run them to support the Blockchain. You aren't contributing much unless you turn on your computer for 24/7 as Bitcoin need more nodes with more reliability and uptime.

Yeah it feels as if I have been waiting for an eternity. Gets a bit too much on my nerve. Takes forever to download. Please solve the matter as soon as possible.

Starting from a few days ago, MultiBit is the default recommended desktop client on the bitcoin.org choose your wallet page. MultiBit is a what we call an "SPV wallet" so is capable of processing thousands of blocks per second, and its checkpoints are refreshed frequently enough that for brand new users, they will usually be synced with the chain in 5 seconds or less. I'll explain a bit more about how this works in a moment, as we have many newbies join us in recent months who may not be familiar with the details.

No.

It retrieve merkles trees of the blockchain ... it process nothing and it "must have" nodes of bitcoin core to emit and receive transactions.
Like all android wallet, too.

is there a new version?
Thank you.

I'am not experienced in those stuff , but if I use Bitcoin Core (with sync) & Multibit (without) , what would be the difference exactly ?  ::)

Bitcoin core downloads the entire blockchain and allows you to use features like BitcoinRPC but Multibit connects to their server for the blockchain and checks your balance there and don't allow RPC features. You have to trust MultiBit servers to have valid information for your wallets. Bitcoin Core does not need to have trust since it finds the longest valid chain from a couple of nodes.

Oh , now I understand much better . & what's the RPC Feature please ?

It is basically a command line which allows you to connect do a lot of things, for example sending balance and checking balance, check node status etc. You just need to set Username and password on the configuration file in the directory and you can implement into your script. This is useful for developers which operates a online service and needs instant withdrawals, once a user initiates it, the script can send a command and the coins will be sent instantly. Here's more details :https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/API_reference_(JSON-RPC)

This article says the blockchain download time will be reduced dramatically with the changes mentioned:

http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-blockchain-initial-sync-time-dramatically-reduced-headers-first-sync/ (http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-blockchain-initial-sync-time-dramatically-reduced-headers-first-sync/)

Is this true? If so, when will the new Bitcoin software be released?

There must be an error in this article because it says the new version of Bitcoin software will be 0.10. Yet the current version is 0.9.3

So that might mean that we eant to eait for some time more or the version they wrotr may be wrong or maybe the entire news. Lets wait till cire devs come. ???

   ~~MZ~~

The article is correct on the software version. Version numbers are not decimals, the points separate counts of major to minor releases.

0.10 is due in a "few" months. No one knows exactly when yet. When it is tested as much as is practicable  :).

Yes. Sync time should be dramatically improved for all new nodes which use it.

Oh my bad. I see it's version "10" and the last version was "9.3"

Thanks for the explanation

Excellent thread, thanks to the OP.  

Two things I got from this thread:

1) Multibit, an excellent SPV client wallet (and I have it), is not as anonymous as Armory, since every send bitcoin transaction that comes from it must have come from your Internet Address and nobody elses.  I did not know that.

2) The Powers That Be in Bitcoin, and that includes their chief scientist G.A, intend as of last year (and things may have changed since then, though I doubt it) to eventually 'sell out' Bitcoin to the financial authorities, correctly perhaps surmising that for Bitcoin to grow it must become like any other non-anonymous currency, and be subject to identification of the bitcoin users, for better or worse (see the quotes from at the OP post in the beginning).  Of course the Bitcoin community can resist this for a while, by asking that Bitcoin integrate with say DarkCoin or something similar, but if DarkCoin or equivalent was outlawed by western democratic countries, then Bitcoin would have to surrender or also go extinct.  The writing is on the wall, and clear, as clear to me as it was over 20 years ago when I predicted Swiss banking would become much less anonymous, as it did.

TonyT

For the past few days I have been having a little bit of a problem with the synchronization of my Multibit wallet...I usually open it once a week to try and synch it to the new block chains..can someone help me with the issue please?

I can't even run Bitcoin Core on my desktop anymore due to the speed of my Internet connection. I have my wallet hosted on a VPS.

I had this same problem. I do not know what happened, and  multbit  wallet synchronized and I removed all my bitcoin for another  wallet

Just use something like like MultiBit or Electrum (I'am personally using Electrum) and I think it's the best (y)  ;D

Your VPS provider have the potential to steal your wallet since they have direct access to your VPS. Why don't you run a lightweight client instead? It is much safer than having your wallet at a wallet which you have no physical access to.

It took me 44 hours to install Armory.  I switched to an online wallet Multibit, but it's not 100% anonymous or even as anonymous as Armory.

I hate to say it but BTC is doomed unless they change their business model.

Armory needs Bitcoin Core to function properly. Sure MultiBit isn't 100% anonymous, you can just get a anonymous VPN or use Tor and it would be as anonymous. Multibit just use their server to check balance and broadcast transactions, your anonymity isn't 100% compromised this way. Running a full node is just for users which are more advanced for example, developers. Normal users are encouraged to use SPV clients.

I agree but Bitcoin core is the network of bitcoin. ;)
If you don't have bitcoin core ... bitcoin doesn't exist. :)

Pool's and mining station is the fondation of the bitcoin network.
They use a bitcoin core (or bitcoinj) completly installed.

At this time, you can retrieve more quickly "bootstrap" from torrent official link (need 24h to recreate the blockchain with 75% CPU usage) ... or from other P2P network in final stage (upgraded every 10 generated block in a list of downloads, no need CPU, index and chainstate include).

Dev. must implement this strategy to diffuse more quickly, the blockchain for new client of bitcoin core.

The developers are developing headers-first synchronization which can make normal computer sync faster. Bitcoin core are normally run by Bitcoin enthusiast and other online Bitcoin services. Bitcoin core can only be useful to the network if you port forward port 8333 and leave your computer online for long periods of time. For normal user, it would be better to run a SPV wallet.

Took me four full days to download the BTC blockchain.
For newcomers and widespread adoption that isnt to hot actually..

I'm surprised it wasn't longer than that if you downloaded it recently, personally.  I downloaded the Blockchain back in June of last year and it took me about 3 full days, and that was when it was "only" 9 GB.

I'm having to do some troubleshooting stuff to recover my computer from a virus I had earlier, enough that it may end up wiping my drive knowing how messed up Windows is.  Is the blockchain BitTorrent still being maintained?  I'm just wondering because I need to know if I need to make a backup of the blockchain on my hard drive.

You can upgrade your computer to SSD if possible. The read and write speeds are significantly faster. The Blockchain snapshot on the BitTorrent is still available but you may need sometime for it to sync as it isn't the newest snapshot.

whats a blockchain bittorrent?? i just started syncing and its so slow. is that something to speed up sync?

It is basically the Bitcoin Blockchain file on torrent. By downloading the blockchain using Torrent and put in your bitcoin datafolder, you can speed up sync. This process skips the CPU verification part and the problems of having slow peers by connecting to lots of peer. Take note that the first start up will still take sometime as the client still needs to verify the blocks. Since the blockchain file on torrent was created sometime ago, you still have to synchronize with the network for sometime. Here's the full tutorial https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/doc/bootstrap.md

I am using dropbox and google drive its working fast for me

is armory better than bitcoin core?

Armory only runs with Bitcoin core except for offline usage. You will have to download Blockchain data. Armory gives extra features especially security for Bitcoin core.

   ~~MZ~~

Thanks for the update, really informative  :)

I have tested the clean sync. of my bitcoin core : no problem now, i have retrieve (and CPU) the blockchain in 3 days (non-stop 100% CPU and need 4Mb/s download max to do this).

 :) upload head block first work great now, very very less orphan blocks ...  ;)

i ve been using multibit since the start... liked it better even when i was an amature.

Soon blockchain pruning will be done and problem with blockchain size will be gone :)
Kudos to developers for that.

Thanks ;)

Hi People Currently a brand new Bitcoin miner, pool mining with a Bitmain Antminer S2 I've used Armory for my wallet and I'm currently downloading the block chain through Bitcoin Core. It's actually been downloading for over a week now. At first there was not enough memory on the Laptop to download the whole block chain but I've deleted plenty and it's still running really slowly I'm at 15 weeks but have been for a couple of days now! Any advice on whether I should start again or just ride it out?

Cheers HAWKEYE

Do yourself a favour and use multibit unless you need the entire blockchain for some reason

If it's stuck at 15 weeks for a couple of days its probably corrupted btw

Yes it may happen. And, another possibility is that you have some problem with your nodes. Try to read this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=865237.0

@HAWKEYE481 : Are you mining on p2pool? :)

   ~~MZ~~

Hi thanks for the responses I'm currently mining in Slush's pool, if I used multibit would I have to change my wallet? As I've locked the Armory wallet address in Slush's Pool. Would using Multibit mean setting up a new wallet and changing my wallet address in Slush Pool? I've only built up about 0.15 so far but would prefer for that to be in my wallet.

Thanks

If you started using an address which is in Armory, then dump the private keys - generate a paper back-up and then import it from Multibit. You are all set. If you haven't used address, then copy the address from Multibit and paste it in Slush's pool settings. :)

  ~~MZ~~

Like I say I've already locked the wallet address in there having difficulty trying to unlock it I've sent a ticket into The guys at Slush's Pool a few moments ago I've had no payouts to that address though so the wallet is empty I'm happy to use another wallet just need to figure out how to unlock it first then change the wallet address

As the wallet problem is solved, now the problem is about Slush's pool, so please don't post here about it - create a new thread if you want but it is better to wait for the support reply for the ticket. And, if you are telling that you have no BTC in the address as Armory doesn't show it, then just check it in an explorer because the wallet shows only if the blocks are synced atleast till the Block which included your TX.

Can you PM me what's wrong? I will try my best to help you. :)

   ~~MZ~~

Yeah I haven't even requested a payout but seeing as the wallet is Armory the main problem is that the Block Chain is taking far too long to download. But I'd already locked the wallet address into Slush Pool from Armory and it's taken forever to download the block Chain so now it's either wait for the block chain to be downloaded so it can sync with Armory which is required or start over and change the wallet address. If it's possible Id prefer not to have to change the wallet address? But as it states you need the block chain for it to sync with Armory. With the block chain not being downloaded that's the main problem which if I'm correct this thread is aimed at that specific problem. If the block chain had of downloaded I could of left everything as it was.

Multibit is an option to use bitcoin quickly

Offchain wallets require you to have trust on the operator. The operator can run away with your money and claim that they were hacked. You will not have full control over your funds whereas, blockchain.info allows you to have full access over your private key, no one else have control over that. If the server of blockchain.info gets hacked, your coins are secure as private key are encrypted on the server. I would say blockchain.info or desktop wallet is the better choice over offchain wallets.

Agreed hence why Ive stuck it out with the block chain I now have 2 weeks left until hopefully the wallet syncs with the block chain which inturn will mean I don't have to alter my wallet

Problem solved  :) just made my first payout to my wallet and printed my first paper Bitcoin notes/backups, thanks Muhamned for the offered support

Thanks! Much appreciated!

Is there a list of active projects currently working on/using solutions to this issue?

Hopefully, the new update of Bitcoin core will resolve this. Waiting for it... :)

   ~~MZ~~

i just create another new accout in blockchain and input my blockchain backup
but it just can see my all Transaction history but btc is zero i found all of my old btc address
miss,does somebody knows why?

There's nothing special about the old blocks from years ago. Besides the money that is in some of those old addresses. Why not just move them to a new block every so often and then just delete all the blocks behind that point. You don't need block 0 to verify block 2000 as long as everything below block 2000 is empty. Like, how about every 4 years when the reword is halved, run a script that compresses all Bitcoin transactions down to just the addresses that actually have money. That way a new genesis block is created every 4 years which just contains the addresses that matter. I don't think it would be that hard for all nodes to agree on a compression system like that.



                                          ^^^
                                          [BLOCK]
                                          [BLOCK]
                                          [BLOCK]
[BLOCK]         >>>>             [NEW GENESIS]
[BLOCK]
[BLOCK]
[BLOCK]
[BLOCK]
[BLOCK]
[BLOCK]
[BLOCK]
[BLOCK]
[GENESIS]

The problem with your plan is that addresses don't exist on the blockchain, much less have a balance.

another problem with that is people may have a certain payment address they have given to customers to use in the future  etc even if it contains no balance right now ,they may well be expecting to use it in future and its too much hassle to give your customers 1 payment address and then have to tell them we need to usea difernt one now because the ...........................

what happens to transcations sent to addresses that no longer exist ?

i dont think this is the answer to the problem tbh .............

Thanks for your feedback. However that's not how Bitcoin works. There are billions of Bitcoin addresses out there that have no money attached to them. You don't need to register a number with Bitcoin to make it valid. The only addresses that matter are the ones in the blockchain with money. If I create a new address that's just a public and private key, there's nothing that needs to be registered in the blockchain unless it has money. So NO old addresses would be deleted you can still use whatever old address are out there. It would just look like a new address after the genesis block. Nothing would be lost. I'm just proposing a way to clean out some of the clutter.

I think that you are on the wrong forum because your comment doesn't make any sense. Of course blocks have address and balances. They may not be in a list like I'm talking about. But that's just an example. The developers would have to adapt it to work in that situation.

There really is no object like a balance of an address in Bitcoin. When you think you spend x from your address, you really spend from prior transactions that spent to your address but to spend it, you don't need the address but its public key and a signature using your private key. If the "address" was a script hash, things are slightly more complicated. You would have to present the script that hashes to said script hash and then provide whatever the script asks for. That might be 3 signatures.

So in a sense justusranvier is right and you old maid may check if you are on the right forum.

Thanks for your response. And your answer is much more informed then the previous one. And in a sense your right, but your explanation is going into how Bitcoins are transferred rather then my example of a solution to the blockchain length. Your forgetting that Bitcoin is just a program and therefor can be adapted to any new ideas that may come about. I am very well aware of how the Bitcoin program works and have been programming Java Bitcoin key generators for a long time. I understand all your points very well. That being said, I still don't see anything stopping the Bitcoin nodes from creating a "Summary" block of the address that have the money. And then either deleting everything since then, or just using that as the block for new nodes to start from. For example, rather then downloading 25 years of Bitcoin transactions, maybe my new computer node just download everything since the last "Summary" block. The only problem I see is that you will have a trust problem with that "Summary" block. Perhaps the miners can build the "Summary" block and then put a hash of that in the next transaction or something so that each new node can verify the "Summary" block. Maybe someone else out there can build upon this idea.

Actually, now that I think about it it's not that hard. The miners, every 4 years create a summary block as a special block in the blockchain with the info right in it. The nodes then each verify the "Summary" block and if one of the miners tried to create a false amount they would reject the "Summary" block. Therefore the Summary block would be verifiable by everyone and as a new node all you would do is start from that summary block and build from there. Rather then downloading 25 years of data. Now if you want to you still could maybe it could be an option on the client. And for the "Light" clients they just keep up to date from "Summary" to "Summary" rather then the whole thing.

In essence, this is done by pruning, which will come very soon. Pruning does not group transactions to a concluding total which would be a change to the protocol that will very likely never come, as it assumes address reuse which should be reduced and not be encouraged. Pruning does though get rid of transactions that were already spent. You will be able to tell your node how many GB you want to spend on the bitcoin db and it will never exceed that. In turn, you will not be able to serve data for nodes that start up verifying data from the genesis block.

(highly controversial daydreaming: I would advocate for a rule that forbids spending of outputs that are older than a year, forcing users to at least move all their bitcoins once per year but I know this will never make it into the code. Benefit would be to get rid of lost coins that will become a problem once sha256 becomes weak and we need to transition to the next better thing. Most likely it will become weak gradually but at some point people will "mine" the biggest wallets out there instead of the next block. With the max age rule, we would get rid of the satoshi dice sins of unspendable satoshis and of all the "lost" coins. Satoshi would have to move his coins which would be a great event but we would only learn that he's still alive and nothing more. If coins are moved from output to output independently, this would not merge a thing. The transactions would also almost always qualify for no transaction fees.)

Too much.. Curious about where you believe other technologies began? Everyone understood them from day 1?

Education is very important for the future of Bitcoin. I can see the industry trying to become simpler for all the Homer Simpsons of the world.

New user downloads are on the brink of becoming much faster with version 0.9.4. It's out of development as of this morning in the Ubuntu/Linux PPA. It should be out soon for other versions.

So I just built my new Hack Pro - it's a beast. And for the past two days now I've been trying to synchronize Bitcoin QT and I'm at about 10%.
I figured I'd see what Bitcointalk would say about it, and I wondered if anyone ever thought that there might be a time when the blockchain might get too ridiculously large, and what was my surprise to see this thread as the first thread listed when I logged in!

K, I'm going to go back and read it now.

I noticed some slow down even with 8 connections of Core...

AAArgghhhhh.

I have waited for five days to get my wallet synchronized. Having qt.exe and appdata on a NAS. Once the wallet had two weeks to sync the wallet crashed due to full disk. I'm back to square one, now temporary put the wallet on an external USB drive to my gaming computer, hoping the wallet will synchronize faster...

Once this is done I'll move my coins to Multibit, hoping all this sync struggle will be over.

I got a small question , why Bitcoin Core when it's Synchronizing with the network .. It download various files with small MB's like 150MB or something ... then if I download the torrent , the Bitcoin Core only read that 1 Single Boostrap.dat file ?
Does the Bitcoin client mix all the 150mb files together to get that .dat file of 20 GB or something ?

Dunno if it would help you or not, but I seem to be able to spend my BTC when the blockchain catches up to the point where the wallet was created and funded.  2011 in my cases, and of course the blockchain was much smaller at that point.  Then I can shut the client down.  The blockchain is now three times my total monthly data allowance on my satellite connection so being an actual useful participant in the so-called P2P solution is not very practical.

Some people think that satellite links add some magic diversity to the transmission backbone.  I happen to think this is nonsense given how tightly satellite connections are controlled (even though they are remarkably functional these days though fairly expensive) but whatever the case, you can at best run something like Multibit behind one which makes you more akin to headcount in a herd of sheep than an active participant in supporting the network.  As I see it.

BTW, I asked on another thread but nobody really knew the answer:  If there was a block chain fork and a war broke out between miners, could one make their own choices about which chain to follow in some way with Multibit?  Or is it just sort of hard coded that transaction attempts go into a nebulous cloud and results are put on whatever fork the server decides?  In other words, if there was a fork with unlimited block size and it formed the longest chain (for a while at least), could most Multibit transactions just get slapped on it without the user upgrading or being aware of what is happening?

1) Have you talked to your satellite ISP about using SCTP/IP instead of TCP/IP?

2) Have you talked to your satellite ISP about using UDP/IP multicast in the downlink?

3) - - - - - - - about using MPEG system sub-channels in the downlink?

Have you ever tried to talk to a satellite network provider for consumer class connectivity and got farther than some Indian telling you to re-boot your modem for the 15th time and clear your browser cache again?  Viasat had some horrible DHCP issues with very common routers when I first got the service some years ago.  I did packet captures and showed the problem on a forum, but that is as close as I was able to get to talking tech to anyone.  And it was mainly one other ordinary user who had some skilz.

I'll be switching to T1 this fall.  The phone company says they can do it.  We'll see.

---

BTW, it occurs to me that if an Indian costs Hughes $0.50 and hour and I'm paying them $80/mo, they could keep me on the support line for literally days and still make a profit.  This is not unlike tossing rings at a carnival.  The amount you pay for a chance to win is more than the cost of the prize that you might get.

Yes, I did. I even got invited to Hughes' headquarters in Inglewood to discuss various technical options (not related to Bitcoin).

I think you understand that their consumer market are the proverbial "hicks" and it requires the approach appropriate to hicks. From your avoidance of the 3 technical questions I asked I'm going to assume that you actually don't have the required technical background for a productive discussion with their engineering and NOC staff.

At least T1 is fully symmetric, so you'll have no problems then.
 

So, you told your Indian that you know your connection is asymetric and she was so impressed she turned you over to the NOC where you impressed the engineers so much that they hired you as a consulting staff engineer to get better service for the us hicks who have needs better served with symmetric data channels?  Wow.  You da man!

The lady told me that I was not supposed to know about port 80 on the defaultrouter.

You are perfectly correct that I do not know the various (theoretically) possible protocols available various layers on the satellite link.  I've not studied it very hard either because I'm not staying up nights waiting for any of them to be options for me.  Maybe you can work your magic there at headquarters for me?  But be quick because I am greatly looking forward to plain old T1 and have got the hardware upon which to build my router on the bench.

Dude, you are just a confirmation that Hughes does have a correct policy of treating all consumer-level users as either hicks or repeated TOS violators who burned all possible terrestrial ISP options in their location.

Anyway, for the people interested in the satellite ISPs the intelligent user plan is two point:

1) learn a bit about the specifics of the satellite technology so you don't sound like a vengeful hick with a shotgun,
2) escalate through the installer/reseller support channel.

Edit: I don't want to play thread bump games with tvbcof, so I'm going to edit this message.

Bingo!

I don't want to drag this thread further away off-topic, so a few more observations of importance to those who have to use the wireless ISP:

3) large percentage of customers for those ISPs are high credit risk people. Many non-mobile wireless ISPs therefore sell and install rather strange configurations where all the expensive equipment is outdoors (easier to repossess after payment default) and only an elaborate but cheap power supply is indoor.
4) the same ISPs have seemingly strange fixation on selling "family" plans. It is their way to filter out dangerous loners with no wife/children. The "militarized loners" market segments are separately served through other outlets like military surplus stores.
5) even with very minimal technical skills you should be able to rent and configure yourself a remote server that you can locate in an well-connected area and minimize the bandwidth requirements for "the last miles to the cabin in the woods."

Just FYI, the only other option in consumer-land is a POTS modem, and the line is so bad I can barely talk on it half the time.  Never got more than 19,200 IIRC.  No cell tower in range and I'm 8 miles from the CO.  No line-of-sight to set up a radio link to anywhere interesting even from my own ridge line either.  I'd have to have at least one repeater to reach my place in town (about 12 miles away as the crow flys.)  I've got some shotguns though (...and not the old modem ones for anyone who remember's that technology.)


And for anyone who tries it, let us all know how that works out for you.  Even if you have to take some time off your busy schedule after being hired by the provider as senior engineering staff.

---

And for those of you who design (or blather on about) two-factor authentication, note that not everyone is always in cell range.  I rarely am.

Smart man.  Many have found out the hard way what a mistake that is.


Only config I've ever seen is the modem in the house and what Viasat is calling the TRIA these days out on the dish.  Maybe my credit score is good enough for them.  It's up around 800 IIRC, but I don't pay much attention to it.  Anyway, it would not be a good idea for the maintance dude to come onto my property unannounced and start picking up things.  Or anyone's place in my area.  I don't think I know anyone who doesn't have guns around, and there are a fair number of tweakers.  They are smart enough to stay away from private property for the most part however.  It's kind of a survival of the fittest thing around here.


Oh so that explains my problems.  Thanks for the tip.  I'll borrow my nephew next time I need to requisition services, leave my AK47 at home, and not wear so many hand grenades strapped to my belt.


That's actually one of the main reasons I bought a place in town.  I used to run a server there, but at the end of the day there are still jurisdictional problems which make it somewhat like pissing into the wind.

---

If I may beg you to dig deep into your well of knowledge one more time, would you suggest that I tell my 'installer/reseller support channel' that the reason I'd like them to give me a synchronous protocol on my beam is that I wish to run bitcoind?  I ask because my bank told me that they canceled my account because it was hooked to Coinbase and if I did anything Bitcoin related with any other accounts they would cancel those as well and drop me as a customer completely.

I'm thinking perhaps I should just say I wanna run a security cam.  --edit:  ...but I'm a little worried that since they staff their engineering dept with geniuses like yourself who they find on their tech support line, they may have the ability to recognize the port 8333 traffic and slap me for being naughty.

OK, back on topic here...


Anyone?  Anyone?  Knowledge? Hypothesis?  Guesses?

I probably won't ever run Multibit, but being something of a hodler being able to predict what might happen in certain scenarios is kind of important to understand.

not sure about the multibit thing but i like to run the bitcoin qt core on my main computer 24/7 to help strengthen the network in my area and help other users near me download it faster ....

i like the fact that the bitcoin network is more powerful than the 500 top super computers  on the planet combined  and i intend to help  keep it that way if i can :)

i have  multibit on my laptop if i need to make a quick transaction somewhere too and this combination works well for me

In theory, you write code. In reality, you subvert bitcoin with treasonous statements such as this.

It takes days to sync my wallet. It really needs better solution  :P

Leave it running and it stays up to date and doesn't use resources.... You don't even notice it in the background of you have a reasonable spec pc

Spamming with your referal link around won't help you earn any money . Doing services , being active and enrolling in signature compaigns , helping people , selling goods you have .. that what will makes you earn money.

[sarcasm]Yeah those two things are totally different.[/sarcasm]

Is MultiBit as safe to use as QT Core ?

Thanks

Yes, it is! FYI if your computer is compromised(affected with viruses/malwares), even the secure wallet isn't safe.

   -MZ

QT Core is good only for folks who can keep it on and connected to the internet all the time...you break it for one day and it takes 15 minutes to sync

Multibit is a good choice

some people dont turn their computers off anyway for other reasons and most western houses have wifi thesedays

i have multibit as well but i like to run a full node anyway to strengthen the network

i think its only a matter of time before the current blockchain is pruned or compressed into something more managable  etc because new users will  have no need to store every transaction of the last 7 years

Why bitcoin wallet day to day very slow sync network?

Maybe because of the node. Try to add new nodes:


   -MZ

Thanks
let me try

It is also important to choose a node that is the nearest to you. Download and upload speed can decrease if the peer is far from you. If the wallet is syncing slowly, it would be most probably due to the verification of the blocks or you have a slow drive. Every blocks have to be verified individually and read/write and CPU speed is a important factor here.

block chain size is most important right now, in near future it will be impossible for most normal users to run full node
old chains prunning is a must
hurry up devs!

The fact that, since the mid-20th
century, the cost of data storage and the cost of
computing power have been decreasing exponentially
year after year, regardless of technological challenges,
market crashes, or anything else. Surely Bitcoin may go
througn growth spurts, but eventually blockchain growth
will become linear (when we hit the block size limit, or
when we remove the limit and let the transaction
frequency reach an economic equlibrium based on tx
fees). Either way, I see no big problem, and I've been
running a full node for several years without any
additional cost.

One of the problem here is the disk space and the other would most probably be the read/write frequency that would shorten the drive's lifespan. Every time a blocks gets mined, the blocks would have to be written to the disk and you would also have to read the files when a peer request a block from you. This MIGHT impact you due to the amount of read and write required and the chances of shortening the lifespan would be pretty high.

The bigger problem if if I don't use the app for a few days it takes 15 minutes to one hour to sync. I think this needs to be addressed in the updates.

There is nothing to do with this. Because it is the time it needs to download and sync the blockchain. So if you have a fast internet and CPU/GPU processor, it will finish faster.

   -MZ

My blockchain very slow and spend a lot memory, i want to know how to the solution of matter said?

You will have to use light wallets like Mutlibit, Electrum, Bither, GreenAddress etc...

   -MZ

But in between the wallet that you mention what there is had the feature private keys like blockchain?

for all of these problems I hqve selected a online wallet

I didn't understood what you asked correctly. Yes, it has all features of Blockchain.info.


I hope you won't lose any BTC.

   -MZ

I think there will be less nodes when the blockchain is getting bigger and bigger, resulting into centralization...

6615 nodes now

https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/

There are nodes which have the max amount of connections and it won't be able to count those nodes. Also, it doesn't cost much to get a hard disk with at least 40gb of space, it is fairly cheap. There are people running nodes on servers which is recommended since they are reliable nodes which hardly ever goes down. Most home computers goes down every night. The network need more reliable nodes than unreliable ones.

I think the #of nodes with max connections are probably more than offset by 'useless' nodes... you know, I could have my home connection appear on that list, but since I have 768kbps upstream, it would benefit the network by doing two things,  jack and shit.

It has been solved with the current Beta release of Bitcoin core 0.10 (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/0.10/doc/release-notes.md).

   -MZ

I would strongly advise against using that codebase; it is of questionable quality and security. The Bitcoin Foundation (http://thebitcoin.foundation/) recommends starting at version 0.5.3 (http://thebitcoin.foundation/v0.5.3-0-gd05c03a.tar.gz) and from there, applying some patches (http://therealbitcoin.org/ml/btc-dev/2015-January/000030.html) to remove some of the more obvious malicious bits of code.

Review the code and build it yourself then. Why would you say it's of questionable quality and security? It has been verified by lots of people and the lead developer of Bitcoin. It would obviously be a good choice to use 0.9.3 as it is the most stable currently. You would just be wasting your time trying to make changes.

Uh.. so let me get this straight. 0.9.3 is the best version because its authors said so? Did you "verify" the code? I happen to know that real people (http://therealbitcoin.org/mailman/listinfo/btc-dev) have taken a look, and it's not pretty. Satoshi wasn't a very good programmer (http://log.bitcoin-assets.com//?date=13-02-2015#1017691), and the stooges that you call "lead developers" are even worse -- not because they lack expertise, but because they are good enough to actually do serious damage.

Take your "obviously"s and shove them up your USG hole.

That site isn't really Bitcoin Foundation's. Need solid news and proof.

   -MZ

Here ya go (http://qntra.net/2014/11/introducing-a-new-bitcoin-foundation/).

real people like who ?

http://therealbitcoin.org/mailman/listinfo/btc-dev


dont see any names .......

Now you are telling Satoshi wasn't a good programmer! :D I am liking you more. I suggest you to quit BITCOIN because it wasn't made by a good programmer and it isn't good. Or I suggest you to tell your REAL PEOPLE to create new Bitcoin. :)

   -MZ

Scroll to the bottom of this document (http://therealbitcoin.org/ml/btc-dev/2015-January/000030.html) for the GPG key fingerprints. I'll go ahead and do your work for you:

• 1721 5D11 8B72 3950 7FAF ED98 B982 28A0 01AB FFC7 (http://pool.sks-keyservers.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xB98228A001ABFFC7) : asciilifeform (http://w.b-a.link/user/asciilifeform)
• 4F79 0794 2CA8 B89B 01E2 5A76 2AFA 1A9F D2D0 31DA (http://pool.sks-keyservers.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x2AFA1A9FD2D031DA) : ben_vulpes (http://w.b-a.link/user/ben_vulpes)
• 027A 8D7C 0FB8 A166 4372 0F40 7217 05A8 B71E ADAF (http://pool.sks-keyservers.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x721705A8B71EADAF) : mod6 (http://w.b-a.link/user/mod6)
• 3DAE 5385 2AF4 7432 CE3C 9318 FF23 EAA3 D815 427F (http://pool.sks-keyservers.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xFF23EAA3D815427F) : PinkPosixPXE (http://w.b-a.link/user/PinkPosixPXE)

See: signed code (http://s.b-a.link/?q=signed+code).



Uh.. we're the ones who actually care about bitcoin; you're the ones trying to make a new one with your gavincoin hard fork nonsense (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=941331.msg10322069#msg10322069). What do you think a hard fork is? It's a new chain! An altcoin! And it's already been proven that there's no such thing as cryptocurrencies (http://trilema.com/2014/the-woes-of-altcoin-or-why-there-is-no-such-thing-as-cryptocurrencies/).

I am not for 20 mb fork^[1] even theymos has told in a neutral way. But... what you told about Satoshi made me to say that but no offence. :)

[1] It needs more investigation and some improvements.

   -MZ

Yeah it's a lot easier to sync with the network when you don't bother getting all the data anymore. Kinda like how it's a lot easier to transport gold bars when you hollow them all out before-hand.

I think I'll move my coins to blockchain.info, I cannot/ do not really want to run a core node consuming 30+ GB of HDD space.

That is a terrible idea (http://qntra.net/2014/12/blockchain-info-discloses-vulnerability-window/).

Based on the description this doesn't affect me. I guess there are plenty of people who are happy with their service overall.

Of course it effects you, unless it's possible to keep your own copy of the javascript and never let them serve you another (a practice I doubt you were employing). Every time you open up that site in your browser you're hoping that someone doesn't give you malicious javascript. It doesn't have to be on their end; if someone is able to compromise your communications channel they can serve you any code they want. And by 'they' I mean USG.

The incident linked happened once, for 2.5 hours.

Also based on this I should also hope that nobody has installed an undetectable malware on my computer that logs my password for my wallet.

If even cold wallets can be compromised where would my coins be safe anyway?

And it could happen again..

Your coins would be safe offline -- as in, the private keys are never on a networked machine. I'm not sure how you skip from "javascript wallets aren't safe" to "cold wallets aren't safe." The point is that you re-download your wallet software every single time you open up blockchain.info. It's not a one-time thing.

I know that the private key is safe if it is offline, as long as given malware is not interfering. Which has probably similar chances as people trying to inject on my connection.



"If even cold wallets"...
I tried to imply here that just because your private key is on a computer - that was supposedly never connected to the internet- it doesn't mean that it is completely safe. Coupling directly to the previous statement.

I realize that online services are most likely not the best practice and I haven't used them myself as they were going down and popping up, but on my current system I cannot afford 30 something GB of missing space.

I might look into lightweight clients that do not download the entire chain, however I am not sure how secure those are. I will have to read up on that topic as well.

Oh, perhaps you should familiarize yourself with this (http://s.b-a.link/?q=pogo). It's a $20 device that you can plug a used laptop hard-drive into, plug into your router, and forget about. These instructions (http://danielpbarron.com/pogo-howto.txt) will do for now, until we figure out how to get it working without the systemd nightmare. The thing isn't really meant to be your wallet, but you can probably figure out how to connect it to your thin client. You shouldn't rely on someone else's full node; you run a similar risk to relying on someone else's javascript.

what is the bitcoin an which aresa is about to be handel rth orgidnistiom is post by bitcoin

I know about the PogoPlug, wanted to use it for another project. I have a raspberry Pi and managed to get an altcoin client "partially" running (some node connections cut out, didn't have the time to properly troubleshoot) I think I could get bitcoin working with that. The question of storage still remains, 2.5" external HDD would do yes.

In this case I would be still concerned that I have to remotely connect to my wallet. Even though it is on my server. But I get it, it is a step better than someone else's service on the internet.

Interesting device (that actually costs $50, not $20, for the basic version), but the router still needs to download the whole blockchain and you need a spare disk, so that will not solve the download time problem. If demand is sufficient, a better solution would be flash memory/usb flash drive(s) sold with the initial blockchain already written on them, and a full node software update to allow it to directly read blocks from the flash media, in addition to the newer blocks on the hard disk. Flash media is ideal for that usage because it's cheap, has standard capacities similar to blockchain size, is efficient with random read-only access, and the blockchain copy can easily be updated from time to time with new blocks accumulated on the hard disk. That's also better for your hard disk health and availability.

Too many words... what's the TL;DR? My new install is taking DAYS to sync.

Unfortunately the very high write amplification caused by bitcoind will also kill any flash device in a few years.

There's quite bit of work that needs to be done to safely run Bitcoin on a flash device for extended time periods. I'm not aware of any open-source flash-specific database engines.

That would defeat the purpose of bitcoin. What good is a blockchain that you didn't receive from the network through the lengthy process of consensus verification? You might as well just use a thin client.

A normal thumbdrive would be able to last quite sometime even with high IO usage. A few years is already considered long and flash drives would be much cheaper then. A better idea is to use your old harddisk and hook it up to your computer. If you aren't in need of the features available only in Bitcoin Core/ other full chain client, don't use it. A normal SPV client is secure enough for daily usage.

"A few years"? More like "a few months" or maybe even "a few weeks". A database with write-ahead-logging is a perfect example of pessimal application for flash storage: lots of small writes, forced buffer flushes to permanent storage and never read back (unless the database application crashed).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write-ahead_logging

If "normal thumbdrive" means the typical cheap drive with controller and wear-leveling optimized for FAT32 file system then I wouldn't be surprised if the device died even before the full current blockchain synchronization was complete (when formatted using any modern file system).

thanks :)

That would defeat absolutely nothing. Once thoroughly verified, old versions of the blockchain NEVER change, so that would be very stupid to insist that the only way to get the whole blockchain is to download it all through slow network connections and very slow servers, knowing also that the blockchain tends to grow faster with time; what a stupid waste of network bandwidth and time! Yes, one can of course use a thin client instead but that was not the point of my post.

False. When you download it the usual way, you get it from many different sources. When you get one pre-verified chunk, you get it from one source. If that one source is your own full node, then no problem. If that source is some stranger on the internet, you have a big problem. Maybe at this stage in the game it isn't an issue. But these are certainly the considerations to make if you see bitcoin having any sort of future.

Block chain download needs to be shrunk down and only have say at least 1 years of active transactions and then to be archived into another system where your wallet can access it by typing a command in and then calling to download archived transactions this way it would reduce the active size of the chain as it does not need to have such a large amount of data to download 20Gb and counting how many people wanting to download that on to their system. I dont think many like this and why they use places liek blockchain.info but poses more of a risk that way online wallet.

yes very interesting stuff. . Thanks for the info

It's a little more than 20 gigs.


If this is too much, bitcoin speculation isn't for you. In the hypothetical future you have described, the poor people will just have to get bitcoin checking accounts or something; we're not compromising the network so that they can have easy blockchain access.

Hmm, it's more like 35GB (aha! just read above, oops)

I purchased my first 100GB + HDD probably a decade or more ago?

Bandwidth, well, I guess it depends on your location, but generally all these cable and DSL providers are all about downstream and give jack shit for upstream, at least in the US.

Blockchain download would only use download bandwidth, correct me if I'm wrong. It will use upload speed only if you set it to relay transactions and block.

I do not mind it but when you have to look at setting up a separate HDD for it is not good. I do like BTC but when it comes to such amounts of space a lot of people in 3rd worlds will not use it simply because of the data and amount that is needed to be downloaded and then continue to download small amounts. Moved over to block chain and paper wallets for now till at least this gets reduced in size. even android wallets dont use up this amount of space nor do other btc wallets.

It doesn't really matter what you like, and this point about 3rd world people has been refuted (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=941331.msg10322069#msg10322069). I snipped out the relevant bit, but you would be well advised to read the rest of the post.

It's the same in the EU and I think probably in the rest of the world too. I think they do this to prevent you from running a server from home for cheap.


Agree. Many people simply can't afford so much storage space. 30 something GB is simply a lot.
Oldish laptops with 80 GB of HDD have a hard time with the blockchain maybe even impossible if you want to use it or anything else like web browsing, for which it would be perfectly capable. Even more, I had a laptop with 250 GB and I was fighting with Bitcoin for every last bit of space on the HDD (OS, work software, work data etc +bitcoin).

Nope.
I do not know what you consider at a low speed, but here ,in Russia, I pay 450 rubles($7.44 or €6.87)(per month) for 50 Mbit/s upstream and 50 Mbit/s downstream.

I have an old PC for bitcoin (and others P2P tools ...)
but if you have SATA ... you can buy a cheap 1To drive ... or a cheap 256Go SSD now.

not the point. ;)

Good to know then! Thanks for the info.
In countries I have lived so far the upload was always a 10th of the download speed.

That's bad, in Singapore, upload was always higher than download no matter how I test it and the speed is always at or above the promised speed by my ISP(300mbps)

I seriously have never seen/heard of this. But its cool. 300 mbps, is awesome. The highest I had was 50 mbps and that was for 30 GBP a month! Upload was around 10.

in sweden most people have more
the average is 56-57MB   but many people have 100MB/s  package

Thank you very much! :)

I'm wondering, if we see bitcoin, or just any cryptocurrency based upon the blockchain principle, large, whether the volume of the chain is not going to be problematic.

If we look at companies such as Visa, they processes several thousands of transactions per second.  Now let us assume that the minimum amount of data for a transaction is 100 bytes (send and receive address, and amount and some data) in a transaction-optimised set of cryptocurrencies.  Let us assume that 1000 transactions per second happen.  That means 100 KB per second on the block chain.  That is a data flux that is still reasonable to keep up with, but when accumulated, it is huge.  It is more than 8 GB per day.  The block chains of the cryptocurrencies taking these transactions would grow at a pace of 8 GB a day, which means 3.2 TB a year.

Of course, the burden can be distributed over different cryptos.  You only need to look at the block chain of the crypto you're interested in.  If there would be a few tens of cryptos around, sharing the burden, each chain would only grow with a few hundred GB a year.  But still.  These are big volumes, even in the future.

Bitcoin doesn't need to compete with Visa. Visa isn't a censorship and counterfeit resistant, perfectly fungible, sounder than gold currency. Visa is a payment processor, and if it wants to remain relevant in the coming decades, it will have to start offering bitcoin denominated lines of credit.

You might want to give this post a read:

Please take what danielpbarron says with a grain of salt. He is the same guy that is trying really hard to make MP (Mircea Popescu) a really happy boss while he is advocating the keep of a 1MB blocksize limit. Visa will never to able to offer anything related with bitcoin with this 1MB block limit because they will not play the bid-for-space war. danielpbarron is more interested in his power and influence while playing nice for MP than the Bitcoin development!

The idea is that they won't have to bid all that much because the limit will keep all the little transactions off the block chain and on the 3rd party ledgers. In this way, debts can build up between companies like Visa and get settled on a daily/weekly/monthly basis via the block chain. Yes, that means poor people don't get to anonymously buy anarchy themed lapel pins, but it ensures that poor people can verify that the worlds supply of money has not been corrupted. The only way to perform a legitimate validation of the transaction ledger is to retain a full copy of it on local devices, a task that becomes cost prohibitive as blocks become larger.

Storage is getting cheaper,bandwidth is getting cheaper ever year, by the time bigger blocks come,I think we'll be able to swallow them, just like now...

There is plenty of.lite wallets for anyone who can't be bothered running a full client

That's not an assumption I want the world's economy to bank on.

And if you can't be bothered to maintain your own full node, you don't need your transactions on the block chain. The revolution in bitcoin wasn't the ability to pass around signed transactions; the revolution was in a distributed consensus of those signed transactions. If you aren't checking the validity of the transactions, you aren't using bitcoin. If you're using someone else's node to check the validity, you are relying on them! So then, what is the point of having your petty little transaction bloating up my hard drive!? The people who "can't be bothered" are never going to bother, and I do not want my money compromised to give them some illusion of freedom! Let them have checking accounts and credit cards denominated in bitcoin, and let them also have the option to validate a bank's books with their own inexpensive full node.

Please highlight to me the offchain solution that is available since we are approaching the 1MB block limit very fast.


So now you are trying to force every bitcoin user to have a full node? Just like every webpage visitor has a full server in his house? Satoshi never visioned such a world. He stated that the full nodes will be centralized and that people will use Light clients. Why are you trying to impose YOUR point of view on everyone else? Why don't you let everyone to decide if they are ok with centralized nodes or not? Why do you think that there will not be some kind of trusted full nodes service where people can whitelist and blacklist centralized nodes? Stop trying to limit stuff and stop being MP dog who just follows orders!

If you aren't running a full node, you aren't using bitcoin! That's not me "forcing" anything; it's just a fact. The more apt analogy is gold backed paper currency -- those handling the physical gold are like the full node operators, and those who just pass around paper bills are like the thin client users. It's not inherently wrong to use the bills rather than the metal, but the system shouldn't be crafted around the paper. Your suggestion is that I shouldn't mind that all the gold be stored in a few "trusted" warehouses rather than dispersed throughout the world in many different locations. You seem to gloss over the fact that your level of trust with the nodes isn't the issue; it's that there being few of them makes it trivial for a government to seize the whole thing. Was the demise of the Liberty Dollar (http://qntra.net/2014/12/von-nothaus-gets-house-arrest/) due to a lack of trust from his clients? No. It was because a rouge state stole his assets and arrested him.

For what it's worth, MP has not "ordered" me to do anything. I waste my time on the forums against his recommendation. I can't find it in the logs (http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/), but I recall asking him if I should post here and him responding in the negative. How about you stop "limiting stuff" to what some bad programmer (http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=13-02-2015#1017691) said and stop following the orders of UnSavoryGarnish (http://trilema.com/2014/usgavin-the-lolcow/).

its not the same as your analogy because people who have lite wallets
are still posession of their own "gold"

the "gold" doesnt belong to the "warehouse" node just because you maybe using a litewallet

i have a lot of coins stored in a  multibit wallet i use when im travelling but theyre not any less secure than coins stored  in my full client node , AFAIK theyre both bulletproof provided the systems dont get compromised by malware or keyloggers or whatever

It's not about who "owns" the gold; it's about whether the gold is actually there or not. Obviously bearers of a gold certificate are considered to be "owners" of the corresponding bar, but that is not a guarantee that the gold actually exists. Your multibit wallet has to get transaction data from a full node, and if that full node says your address has funds when it actually doesn't, you may be tricked into making a bad deal. This isn't about having an insecure private key; it's about nodes falsifying transaction history. I don't need your private key in order to create a transaction that appears to send you funds; if you don't have a full copy of the transaction history to verify it, you won't be able to tell a bogus transaction from a legitimate one. If everyone comes to rely on the few "trusted nodes" like bc.i, and a malicious state takes over these nodes, they can create whatever transaction history they like and people like you will not be able to recognize the difference.

The system should be crafted around a mix of security and easy of use. How would you feel if Adobe would require you to host a server and to keep the current Flash installer hosted there? The same can apply Firefox or Chrome or any other file that you need to download. It would be a very stupid thing just like your imaginary fact

Also by your logic you just denied Bitcoin to AT LEAST 2 bil people who can't afford to keep a rPi plugged in all the time. There are TONS of people in Africa or in the Jungle or in China who could use Bitcoin with a very cheap Android smartphone (internet usage) or a cheap Nokia for SMS usage. People in Africa will not be able to host a node. Look at Australia's Internet speed. They are in the stone age there. It will take a lot of time to get those speeds in Africa, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to use Bitcoin. They should use Bitcoin and we already have ways to do it. Why exclude them? Just because you want it? What about we exclude you from this forum because you don't have a scuba diving suit or because you don't have a proper server which can feed the contents of the forum? Sounds retard? Well it's the same with your brilliant idea.


Last that I've checked there were mode than 6k nodes all spread all over the world. Which government are you talking about? And how do they plan to do it? Just as they did with torrents? You don't seem to trust the technology that is behind Bitcoin or you simply don't understand it.

No; security should be the #1 priority of the network. The "ease of use" side should be provided off the block chain. Those who favor easy over secure can have their cup of punch without there being a turd in the bowl.

---

Those people can use whatever they currently use but with bitcoin backing it instead of FIAT. They can use their local node to confirm that the money supply is not being debased. And do not use the raspberry pi; it sucks (http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=07-03-2015#1044693).

---

Even if that "6k" figure were accurateⁱ, it should still be a great concern; that is a shockingly low number! It isn't going to get larger by making the cost to run one greater. The government I am talking about is the U.S. Government; the one currently in control of the world's reserve currency; the one that stands to lose a lot when bitcoin takes over. How do they do it? It's too late for them to kill it via the hashing route (http://trilema.com/2013/things-that-matter-these-days-things-that-dont-matter-these-days/), and shorting it (http://qntra.net/2014/11/usms-auctioning-more-bitcoins/) hasn't worked. They seem to think they can kill it by breaking it from within. People like you, whether on their payroll or just stupid, are helping them by pushing this bad idea that the rules need to change. I don't trust the technology? You're the one who wants to change it!

---

i : it isn't (http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=03-02-2015#1004249)

true

How does the number of active nodes compare with the number of active miners?  I'm guess there are way more miners than there are people running full nodes.  I do both in support of the network.

Well, a node isn't "connectible" if it isn't turned on and caught up.

As to making more nodes, we're working on it (http://s.b-a.link/?q=pogo).

---

A miner is necessarily a full node; there must always be more full nodes than there are miners. And it's not just "in support of the network;" it's in support of yourself. The only way to really know if you have funds or not is to check the full transaction history.

I don't think either of those statements are true at all.  You can mine without a node installed on your computer.  A miner is not validating and propagating the block chain, it's looking for a solution for the current block.  Multiple miners can point to a pool, the pool only needs one node to support thousands of miners.  I'm pretty sure there are way, way more people mining than are running full nodes.

only the pool is the miner - not you running some hardware
(except for p2pool or eligius with getblocktemplate (not sure if its still supported though)

Imagine in 10 years's time, it wont take a week to sinc, but a generation.

the average user will have a pruned version or lite client by then
most people wont need to have the last 16 years of transaction history so i think its a non issue

If we can have trusted places where we can download software without the fear of them being infected with viruses/malware then we can have trusted operators/nodes so that some users can use only a lightweight client without burdening them with a full node requirement. You sound like this is something impossible, but it's far from being impossible. What's the use of every user running a full node if they can't trust the place where they download the Bitcoin Core software?

There are many different providers of hosted files and some are trusted (Firefox, Google, Bitcoin.org etc) and some are untrusted. A random invented example would be www.OptimizeMyPC.com that promises to speed up your computer if you download their tool which is filled with malware/trojans.

We can have this with Bitcoin nodes too. This is just another business opportunity and this is very easily doable.

Again nothing constructive from your posts. Just the usual MP quotes and the usual and useless "limiting stuff is better". You have a very limited and pessimistic vision about this whole ecosystem.

In 10 years I think we'll have a working combination of zero knowledge proofs plus committed UTXO sets that make syncing all the way back to the genesis block unnecessary.

If you're gonna just go trusting people, then why do you need your transaction on the block chain? The block chain is for when you don't trust anyone. You are arguing in favor of what amounts to security theater. People are worse off if they think simply having a private key is what makes their funds safe. Instead of them trusting a node to relay their petty transactions, they can just as well trust a bitcoin denominated bank to make a promise on their behalf. The banks can then settle balance differences in large chunks on a daily basis, thereby keeping the size of the block chain minimal. In this way, anybody can verify the process with an inexpensive node plugged into their home router. Whereas with your proposal, only a few wealthy people can verify the process despite everyone having access.

You have conceded that the common man will have to trust someone. Please stop with this nonsense that we must also make the block chain impossible for the common man to verify. It is not necessary to have both these results; only one is needed.

Uhhh, there is no "full node requirement", there already exist a multitude of lightweight wallets that do not require you to d/l the block chain and there are thousands of trusted places these wallets look to, they're called full nodes; I think you're missing the point.

Since this is a consensus network used by everyone (big companies along with random private individuals) I think it is obvious to say that the small private user can get along with the consensus trust derived from the fact that those that have a bigger stake into blockchain will not allow history to be re-written. This is how we get to the whitelisted/blacklisted nodes.

I am thinking that BitPay or Coinbase is able to setup various full nodes all over the globe and the small users can whitelist their nodes so that they shouldn't worry that much about the blockchain being altered! In the Bitcoin ecosystem the security is the same for the big companies and for the small individual and a change in the blockchain history would affect both in the same time. The big companies will focus more on the blockchain security since they have much more to lose while the small guys can just leech the blockchain history from them.

I find this to be a very logic and productive way of working with this issue this instead of being a retard and simply banning those that can't afford to run a full node like your boss MP wants to do.

As previously said if you trust Google servers to host your Google Chrome copy then you will definitely trust Exchangers and Payment Processors to have an unaltered blockchain at everyone's disposal.


Pay attention to the full context/discussion please.

I know that there is no "full node requirement", but our friend here danielpbarron who is just Mircea Popescu's obedient dog is saying that anyone that isn't running a full node shouldn't use bitcoin which is utterly stupid and retarded and it will never happen. Here is where the discussion started:


He is afraid that the US Government will seize "the whole thing" like he saw in the movies...

I would really like to see Russian nodes being seized by the US Gov. That would be something new.

Got it, thanks, things get lost in these long threads.  I agree with your take, lots of people are not going to run full nodes for a variety of reasons and there's nothing wrong with that (and they are still using bitcoin).

How I can get back a lost wallet? Somebodey can help me plss??

Does "Block chain size/storage and slow downloads for new users" sounds like a good place to ask how do you get back a lost wallet? Ask yourself that with loud voice.

Now...What does a lost wallet mean? Are we supposed to guess whatever happened with your wallet? Provide more details maybe...

Then NSA may have a copy, especially if it had once resided on a mobile device.  So, become a fairly high positioned person in that organization or someone who they classify as a 'customer' and you may be able to retrieve it.  Don't worry if this process takes a while...lots of the data collected, and especially data of this nature, wouldn't be worth gathering in the first place if it were not to be retained indefinitely.

I am thinking I don't want to rely on the say-so of companies that are already in bed with the USG. I am thinking that if a small group of USG-friendly companies has a monopoly on the full node market, they will eventually start rewriting history to airdrop free bitcoin into government coffers. These are the kinds of conclusions a thinking person can arrive at; what is it you're doing? You call it thinking?

---

Google Chrome isn't responsible for the world's money supply.. But I get what you're trying to suggest -- that bitcoin to FIAT exchanges must have only the best intentions.. Pay no mind that they are FIAT companies; not bitcoin companiesⁱ! Does the block chain demand KYC compliance? Nope; that's a FIAT requirement. These companies will do what it takes to remain in the good graces of their FIAT overlords, and I "definitely" don't trust them to keep an unaltered block chain if left alone with the task.

---

i : Actual Bitcoin corporations (ABCs) versus fiat-based frauds trying to masquerade as Bitcoin companies (while masquerading as companies in the first place) on the solid theory that the general public is too stupid to make any difference, this one included, and on the flimsy theory that the general public matters in Bitcoin (FBF-TTMABC-WMACITFP-OTSTTTGPITSTMAD-TOI-AOTFTTTGPMIBs, alphabets for short). (http://trilema.com/2014/actual-bitcoin-corporations-abcs-versus-fiat-based-frauds-trying-to-masquerade-as-bitcoin-companies-while-masquerading-as-companies-in-the-first-place-on-the-solid-theory-that-the-general-public-i/)

aha ok thanks.

For free obviously.

yes, it must be concern it.
do you feel this will take problem in future?

I will be happy when blockchain and client is read off cloud storage if that ever comes. Saves massive amounts of data on ones system to be gobbled up by transactions. Something like this should happened due to many people not wanting to have to download the entire block chain. Yes theirs alt clients but come at a risk and even blockchain.info has its own problems for security and accounts being hacked or missing coins.

Cloud = centralization

I'll never use anything "in the cloud".

I don't see why people complain about 30 or so gigs.  A terabyte is cheap, no one should be complaining about data storage in 2015.

There could be a decentralized, unrealistic solution to that....
Like when you install your qt wallet, you use the "windows cloud-storage folder" to install the data directory to... or similar.
But that would sure be bandwidth intensive if it worked.

Best way I've found to use a wallet is to use a usb 3.0 stick for the entire wallet.
...also... syncing your wallet on a quad-core I-7 is about 6 days faster than on a dual core AMD A6 using the same connection.
... just so everyone is aware that your processing power has everything to do with sync speeds if you have a decent internet connection.
I can sync the QT wallet in about 7 hours from scratch on a Verizon moto-droid wi-fi hotspot with an I7, but not on the AMD A6, it's an all-week job with that one.

You know a lot of the other cryptocurrencies are starting to use wallets with Bootstrap.dat...option...which kind of allows you to sync it up faster...I guess...not sure too much about the technical side..so I don't know what to say...wouldn't something like that be an option?

Bitcoin is already beyond the bootstrap.dat. For most users using 0.10. is way faster than using the bootstrap.dat from a torrent. This does not reduce the size though, just the download and verify speed. The big advantage is that the newest client can sync from several peers at once and does no longer need the blocks in order (42 after 41, etc.).

Wow thanks for informing me about that..I was getting worried that once I have to reformat my computer I might have to restart the whole troublesome process of syncing all over again and it will take me ages...

I have one question if anyone willing to answer will be thankful.Is there bootstrap or blockchain data for Bitcoin available ? Last days something went wrong to my computer and began to appear error with Bitcoin wallet core 0.10.0 and I was needed to download all blockchain. It took 3 days to sync it till today. The purpose of asking this someone else or I may be again if have problem that bootstrap will help to sync fast.

There might be still bootstrap files around, but you could do even better. The bootstrap.dat data has to be verified because it comes from an unstrusted source (someone else). Since you currently have all the data, you could (periodically) create a backup of the entire folder. This will not only ensure you do not have to redownload the data, you also dont have to verify it again. The time it takes to verify the data is highly dependant on your CPU/Disk speed, but its probably in the realm of a few hours.

Even though the amount of things to sync is increased, probably the speed of syncing is also increased.

Thanks for the update

nice explanation. great work. thank you  :)

Thanks for the update, appreciate it

If my HD doesn't have 60GB of available space, should I use MultiBit instead of Bitcoin-qt?

If you don't have enough space, it is better to use a thin client, Multibit or Electrum.

or

http://hothardware.com/articleimages/Item1712/Price-Chart-3TB-Drives.png

who purchases magnetic hard drive on this ... year ?
SSD 512Go is a commun article on 2015 !

but, i admit that it requires some cooling feature to stay at 164Mo/s ... when magnetic hard drive can transfer at 95Mo/s from the begin to the end of the total capacity without any cooling system.

SSD are still relatively more expensive than normal magnetic hard drives. A HDD consist of a platter and a spinning head. It can be much more slower than SSD which consist of only chips. Those chips are much faster than spinning drives hence the speed.

well, you don't transfer more than 60Go per day to "think" that SSD have constant speed.
it's wrong.

after 9-12Go, SSD speed decrease like hell when you don't have fan behind (temperature restriction).

You can't really transfer 60GB per day without having to connect to thousands of nodes and uploading loads of data. For every computer, there should be at least one fan, case fan, CPU fan, PSU fan or GPU fan without them, it would be fried long ago. Do you have any realistic data to prove your point?

Thanks for the update.. Blockchain is really slow hope so multibit works well. Especially for new biess....

Multibit would be my choice.

A great info.
Thanks mike for letting us know about spv mode

Thanks for the info :)

I haven't got blockchain on my pc and I am still bitcoin user.

Aight but the whole "be your own bank" thing depends on you maintaining your own full node. Otherwise you might as well be using PayPal. It doesn't do much good signing transactions if you don't also have a record of all the other transactions. I mean, centralized services could just as easily implement a "sign a message with a key" option for authorizing account actions. The whole point of bitcoin is keeping track of the public ledger so that nobody can get away with inflating the supply of money or double spending already spent outputs. These are the things that you cannot do, and by my estimation this makes you *not* a bitcoin user.

Update(s) much appreciated from everyone who has posted.

+1.

I have come in pretty late to this thread but your post is pretty much my view. Bitcoin is peddled as a decentralised payment system and all the latest decisions seem to be pushing it closer to centralised. The proliferation of web wallets and exchanges means that you don't need a client to *use* bitcoin - just a browser - but you are forced into trusting a 3rd party so you are pretty much back to centralised banks. The block chain is getting so large that most home users are running out of drive space on their netbooks, laptops and phones, and the verification time when you start the software is enormous unless you have a huge SSD. So again we are coming to rely on others to be guardians of the ledger, verify transactions, commit to the ledger and mine new bitcoins. That can all be done by one company!

I don't see this as a good trend. It was originally pitched there were no transaction fees. Well. Now there are and what they are is up to a very small group of people. The protocol should be thinning, IMO, not clumping into resource hungry clusters of services.

Hi all i did not realise that when i installed bit-coin core that it was going to take so much room, and resources.
I installed it on my laptop, yet i have a tower sitting next to my miners that is doing nothing, also it has alot more Ram and space than this laptop, Bit-coin core has crashed on me yesterday, we bit of a panic as i see no bitcoins in my wallet, but after a little reading up they should show up after it has finished re-indexing the blocks on the disk,  :-\ I hope anyway, also hit my first bitcoin after 8 months. Taken a long time for bitcore to catch up.

um why are people complaining about blockchain size I mean 1tb drives aren't that expensive

As bitcoins are at early stage,it haven't get popular in the whole world.Such drawbacks becomes an issue for people to purchase or invest in bitcoins. :-[
Such problem arises because of large transactions available in blockchain , those blocks take longer to verify.
If you are on an encrypted filesystem,then consider moving the blockchain and index to a filesystem that isn't encrypted and then symlink to them there.
Overcomming with such problems, a future version (after 0.7) will include LevelDB which should make huge gains as far as performance.
In the meantime, you can always securely download a full set of blockchain data from Sourceforge that is as-of a fairly recent point in time. ;D

I helped a friend download the blockchain a couple of days ago and set up a node, it only took 2 days to download and about 38 GB iirc on a 1tb external drive

Might have been faster to use the torrent but we were not in a hurry anyway and the laptop was around 7 years old  so probably the cpu would have kept us from going much faster

I think most people could spare 38GB at the price drives are now, for the people who can't there is always multibit

By the time he can fill that 1tb drive, it maybe several years down the line and storage and bandwidth will be much cheaper than now

It should probably be around the same speed since there is headers-first synchronization. Just out of curiousity, did it took 2 actual days to download and what version are you using? Unless you have weak CPU and the external drives becomes a bottleneck, it should take slightly less than 1 day max.

Torrent version is quite far behind so they can still take sometime to download the remaining blocks.

Dont overestimate a 2008 system. 1000 USD got you for example an Asus X83VM-X1[1], with 2 cores, 4 Gigs of DDR2(!) ram and 320Gig HDD. That might not sound slow, but thats several CPU and 2 RAM generations old. I recently had a blackout and had to reindex the blockchain on a 2009 desktop AMD tripple core, similar HDD and RAM (only DDR3). I have no exact numbers, but I had to let it run over night, so I guess somewhere between 12 and 16 hours. Even worse it might be a netbook ;)

I agree that the torrent no longer makes sense unless you have to sync several systems and have low bandwith. Thought even in that case you could just sync the machine with the fastest CPU/storrage first and let the rest connect exclusivly to it via LAN.

[1] http://www.cnet.com/products/asus-x83vm-x1-core-2-duo-p8400-2-26-ghz-14-1-inch-tft/

It wasn't a netbook thk fck lol
It was a hp pavilion 17" entertainment laptop but spec was quite weak compared to modern equipment :
Core 2 duo @ 2.26 with 4gb  of ddr3 and a 500Gb sat and  1tb external seagate
We put Bitcoin on the external because he's going to let it run as a node until it dies and the 1tb drive should last few years :)

Threads like yours is helping all of us, but also tells me how complicated btc really is. Thanks for the new update though!  ;)

Check your privilege.

can you de-stick this thread ?

v0.10.x solve the slow network diffusion ... only SLOW blockchain creation is from CPU and HARD DRIVE SPEED issues.

Core 2 Duo 2,9GHz = 3 days to recreate the blockchain.

This isn't much of an issue. Most people at least would have I3 or I5, if they don't have that, SPV clients would be a better way to go. But still, a Pentium g3258 is quite powerful while being under 80USD. The main problem is that he is talking about using a external HDD which may be a bottleneck and we don't really know his internet speed yet.

I think there are a lot of students around and there money is an issue. Plus, if you need some special hardware for bitcoin (e.g. 1TB HDD) then it can be somewhat "exclusive" (In terms of running a full node, of course). As said, I stopped my full node from my laptop when the blockchain went around 30GB-ish. For me, that is a lot of space.  If I can't keep it up 24/7 (or close), not much point anyway.

how is 30 odd GB a lot of space ? what age of computer do you have ?

That could easily be 1/3 of his total space on a laptop. I do understand what you're saying though, and as the blockchain size increases we will continue to see larger amounts of storage offered cheaper. 

i just checked the bitcoin folder and its currently  41.8GB   ;D

It makes no differnce to me as i have a few 1TB drives


what laptop would 30 GB  be a third  of the hdd thesedays ? i rememeber trying to buy a replacement 120GB HDD about 2-3 years ago
and the people in the shop laughed and said we dont sell those anymore (the smallest they had was 320 or 500GB even back then )

Exchange SSD for HDD and you will see plenty of "new" hardware that is limited to 100odd GB of disk space[1]. My laptop (not its not running a full node) "only" has 240 GB and with a collections of different ISOs and other large files I can easily imagine that bitcoin core would not fit any longer over the years. That beeing said, I dont see any reason to run a full node on my laptop, but others might see this differently.

[1] Hi, apple.

I was dealing with bitcoin issues from an old linux laptop of mine with a HDD of 80 GB and I would like to do other things as well. I consider the (now) 41 GB even on a 500 GB disk a lot. I have other files to store apart from my tiny Bitcoin stash.

Also, now with the proposed gradual block size increase the more transactions happen, the larger the blocksize will be. I wonder how long this "be your own bank" can be sustainable before some other measures need to be introduced that wouldn’t require everyone to hold the full blockchain, just say the last X GB.