Size of BTC blockchain centuries from now...

[Yurock]

Has anybody attempted/published a client or utility that could could verify the chain using openCL?

GPUS are used for the hashing involved mining now, is there a reason why it would be inefficient to verify the same way?

In my experience, the bottleneck is not in computation. The slowest thing during block verification are database operations. Within one block, different transaction "inputs" use "outputs" from different previous blocks. The program needs to access all of those blocks to verify "inputs".

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[Desolator]

Btw, how big is the database right now?  It's not stored in the directory I thought it was but I assume my updated but original client contains the entire chain db.  Speaking of that, what directly is it stored in for Windows 7 64-bit?  Because it uses soooooooooo much IO, I want to move it to a secondary drive if possible.

Also, I know this has massive security concerns but if someone downloaded a client that included a giant 1 year history worth of the block chain database for example, how compressed archive friendly would the database file(s) be?

[Dabs]

Centuries from now, the block chain might be a few terabytes in size. But every smart phone in the whole world can store it on the latest version of the microsd card, or even in the phone memory.

Our bandwidth speeds would allow a new phone to completely download the block chain in 1 hour from the neighborhood coffee shop that has free LTE (or whatever WIFI there is then.)

The lite clients wouldn't exist because every person with the slowest and oldest working smart phone runs a full node, and the higher end phones would be mining. The desktops at homes would be mining too in the high ultra-tera-bazillion-hash rates, for the 0.000001 BTC we get for every block every 10 minutes at an obscenely high trillion difficulty.

Then, centuries later, someone inherits an envelope that has a paper wallet with 10 bitcoin private keys, each one worth a few thousand full bitcoins (whereas everyone else has about a dozen bitcoins total worth their annual salary) that was saved a few decades prior.

[kjj]

Btw, how big is the database right now?  It's not stored in the directory I thought it was but I assume my updated but original client contains the entire chain db.  Speaking of that, what directly is it stored in for Windows 7 64-bit?  Because it uses soooooooooo much IO, I want to move it to a secondary drive if possible.

Also, I know this has massive security concerns but if someone downloaded a client that included a giant 1 year history worth of the block chain database for example, how compressed archive friendly would the database file(s) be?

Code:

2012-02-19 1028273116 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat
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2012-08-03 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 344838301 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
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2012-08-21 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 630696938 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-08-22 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 646700956 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-08-23 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 661270387 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-08-24 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 674000481 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-08-25 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 690126369 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
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2012-08-28 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 729101108 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-08-29 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 744126478 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-08-30 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 755980806 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-08-31 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 772855156 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-01 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 789335949 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-02 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 804388646 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-03 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 821006790 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-04 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 836312363 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
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2012-09-06 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 873526155 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-07 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 889422332 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
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2012-09-10 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 930943985 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-11 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 944491878 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-12 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 960655424 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-13 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 972003589 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-14 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 987247808 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-15 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1001929255 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-16 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1014553077 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-17 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1026133089 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-18 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1038611622 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-19 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1053155737 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-20 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1067596678 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-21 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1080601402 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-22 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1094006521 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-23 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1105101587 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-24 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1118726220 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-25 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1129992308 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-26 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1142190581 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-27 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1156590441 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat
2012-09-28 2097197999 /etc/bitcoin/blk0001.dat 1169408710 /etc/bitcoin/blk0002.dat

I don't keep historic data on blkindex.dat, but it is currently 1079406592 bytes.  (Currently meaning right now, not when the snapshot of the block000?.dat files were recorded.)  Oh, and these are my files, not the files.  Yours might be a bit different depending on which orphans your node saw.

I'm not sure about how to move it in Windows.  I *think* you can shut down, copy all the files, edit your bitcoin.conf to include a datadir=D:\blah\ line, and start again.  Pay attention if you do this, using the datadir= option changes where the client looks for EVERYTHING except the bitcoin.conf.  But I'm not sure about that, you may need to use something more elaborate, like a NTFS junction.  The default data dir in Windows is %APPDATA%\Bitcoin

Sadly, it isn't really compressible in the usual way.  Almost everything in it is high entropy, so it won't compress much, if any.  The devs are working on other ways to distribute the files and reduce their impact.

[Ascholten]

you would think that they could break them into say 100 meg pieces that can be loaded as that one chunk, already 'pre figured out' or whatever you want to call it, and then maybe the last 30 days trickle in as it does now.

How about, after a transaction has been verified a few thousand times, umm duuh it's VALID, lets move it to an inactive block chain or something.  I know each piece works off the previous but we we take a 100 meg
piece say 'THIS' is the answer from that ... that gets fed to the next transaction, it might speed things up a bit.

Aaron

[solareclipse64236]

wtf do you mean centuries from now?

it's only good until 2120 something

[Ascholten]

by that time I see an entirely new form of currency and bit coins will be about as obsolete as 8 track tapes.

Aaron

[Desolator]

wtf do you mean centuries from now?

it's only good until 2120 something

I better correct that before people fill up their flamethrowers.  It's only going to keep being created for <100 years it'll still be "good" and useful lol.

Btw my system's not running Linux but don't hate, at least I recoginzed that as Linux from my Redhat training lol.  That does answer my Q since I assume that means it's around 1028MB but just so I know for future reference, aww fuck it, I ran a search it's in C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin\

...except mine's 2,048,142KB for blk0001.dat and 1,100,784KB for blk0002.dat and 1,030,936KB for blkindex.dat.

Btw what precisely are each of those?

[Yurock]

...except mine's 2,048,142KB for blk0001.dat and 1,100,784KB for blk0002.dat and 1,030,936KB for blkindex.dat.

Btw what precisely are each of those?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Data_directory#Files
Blockchain data is split in 2GB files.

[kjj]

by that time I see an entirely new form of currency and bit coins will be about as obsolete as 8 track tapes.

Check your (physical) wallet.  The 8-track tapes are in there.  The entirely new form of currency is here.

[kjj]

wtf do you mean centuries from now?

it's only good until 2120 something

I better correct that before people fill up their flamethrowers.  It's only going to keep being created for <100 years it'll still be "good" and useful lol.

Btw my system's not running Linux but don't hate, at least I recoginzed that as Linux from my Redhat training lol.  That does answer my Q since I assume that means it's around 1028MB but just so I know for future reference, aww fuck it, I ran a search it's in C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin\

...except mine's 2,048,142KB for blk0001.dat and 1,100,784KB for blk0002.dat and 1,030,936KB for blkindex.dat.

Btw what precisely are each of those?

There isn't precise answer.  The blocks are just appended to the block file(s), as they come in.  Each node has a (potentially) unique view of orphan blocks.

[misterbigg]

In 1980 a 26 MB hard drive cost ~$5,000 (or $193,000,000 per TB).
Obviously angry birds isn't viable.  I mean who is going to spend a couple hundred dollars in storage on a free game.

I paid $800 for a ten megabyte hard drive in 1987.

[wumpus]

Ooh the far future, cool.

(/Charles Stross mode on)

Humanity in 2500AD only very superficially resembles that of today. After a few recompilations and refactorings of the underlying mind substrate, and after converting most of the matter in the solar system to computronium, the concept of a human as we know it today seems pretty quaint.

This general purpose programmable material makes it possible to store information at a density never even imagined, by rearranging matter at a scale of particles not yet known today. And there are rumors of other civilizations, far away in the Magellanic cloud, storing information directly in the quantum state by performing a timing attack on the underlying fabric of spacetime.

One of the weakly godlike intelligences decides to use their spare cycles in the Jupiter Brain to compute the Kolmogorov complexity of the block chain, which at that point in time consists of 10^20 bytes of audit trail of artificially intelligent financial instruments solving the problem of interstellar trade between relativistic frames of reference...

(/Charles Stross mode off)

[Ascholten]

I have a feeling within 20 years, money will be dna encoded or something and our 'wallets' are kept right on / as part of our body,  all this silly paper / metal disks, and virtual dollars and bitcoins will be long gone.

Aaron

[Dabs]

No one would want anything permanently stuck on our body (except tattoos). There are movies about this, even old ones.

There would be no more anonymity (which can even be more valuable than many other things) or privacy if our public keys (or private keys) are embedded in our body.

A token might work, but people would be sure to shield them (like RFID passports and credit cards / smart cards.)

[ragnard]

This is an important conversation to be having!

I've been concerned about the large blockchain since I first started studying and using bitcoin in 2011.  I recently installed the Satoshi client on a new PC and it took many hours to download/calculate the blockchain.  With so many users now having fast broadband Internet access, the size of the chain isn't the killer.  It is the huge I/O tasks involved.  I have been trying the Satoshi client out in a Virtual Box Windows 7 image and it is nearly unusable for 2-3 hours if I haven't run it for a few days and the client has to catch back up.  The hard drive just is maxed out making the physical machine nearly unusable.  I've been looking at alternative clients that don't require the full block chain and am glad to see work progressing in that area.

[Mushoz]

This is an important conversation to be having!

I've been concerned about the large blockchain since I first started studying and using bitcoin in 2011.  I recently installed the Satoshi client on a new PC and it took many hours to download/calculate the blockchain.  With so many users now having fast broadband Internet access, the size of the chain isn't the killer.  It is the huge I/O tasks involved.  I have been trying the Satoshi client out in a Virtual Box Windows 7 image and it is nearly unusable for 2-3 hours if I haven't run it for a few days and the client has to catch back up.  The hard drive just is maxed out making the physical machine nearly unusable.  I've been looking at alternative clients that don't require the full block chain and am glad to see work progressing in that area.

In the next release, they will most likely make the switch to levelDB, which will be significantly faster in disk I/O.

[SgtSpike]

This is an important conversation to be having!

I've been concerned about the large blockchain since I first started studying and using bitcoin in 2011.  I recently installed the Satoshi client on a new PC and it took many hours to download/calculate the blockchain.  With so many users now having fast broadband Internet access, the size of the chain isn't the killer.  It is the huge I/O tasks involved.  I have been trying the Satoshi client out in a Virtual Box Windows 7 image and it is nearly unusable for 2-3 hours if I haven't run it for a few days and the client has to catch back up.  The hard drive just is maxed out making the physical machine nearly unusable.  I've been looking at alternative clients that don't require the full block chain and am glad to see work progressing in that area.

It is pretty amazing how long it takes these days... I had a client that was updated through block 135,000 or so, then turned off for months.  Started it back up the other day, and it took 3 days on a 1TB WD Black drive to finally get up to date - HDD crunching away the whole time.

[ragnard]

In the next release, they will most likely make the switch to levelDB, which will be significantly faster in disk I/O.

This is very good news indeed!

[Dabs]

If you have the RAM and hardware, maybe put your datadir inside a ramdrive. At least until it was updated.