Blockchain Size Issues

[btcscriptpremium]

I do coding and programming, so naturally I have to use the bitcoin client and bitcoind servers. I have found that the current 40gb size of them is actually too big, and it is increasing exponentially now. When it was 20gb, thats fine I guess, but having 40gb+ necessary space just to run the client, and you have to wait days to download it, thats when it starts to get hard to use for the average guy. To get a server from digitalocean that has this much space, thats 40 dollars a month. SSDs are optimal because of the constant reading and writing, but no one has ssd space for 40gb.
In the future, the blockchain will ONLY get bigger, and eventually something must be done about it. Maybe something like having the option to only save blocks if they have relation to you in the personal client. The entire blockchain is stored on bitcoin-qt, but is this really necessary? There is no blockchain search feature in the client, and having other people's transactions is useless to me and can't even query them.
I think that this number is getting too big, and it is increasing very quickly.

[dothebeats]

Recording the whole transactions happened in the network is necessary to be available in all nodes so as to ensure that all transactions recorded on the block chain is valid. You can opt to run a SPV wallet and having that doesn't require you to download all of that 40 GB, only the wallet client and that's it (though you don't have all the functionalities that the Qt client have).

but no one has ssd space for 40gb.

As far as I know, there are 512 GB SSDs already in the market. What do you mean exactly with this?

[btcscriptpremium]

Recording the whole transactions happened in the network is necessary to be available in all nodes so as to ensure that all transactions recorded on the block chain is valid. You can opt to run a SPV wallet and having that doesn't require you to download all of that 40 GB, only the wallet client and that's it (though you don't have all the functionalities that the Qt client have).

but no one has ssd space for 40gb.

As far as I know, there are 512 GB SSDs already in the market. What do you mean exactly with this?

Well, those are quite expensive, cost about 250$. I have a 128gb ssd i bought a couple years ago for 150$, and with my OS on it and basic programs, I only have 7gb free on it.

[Za1n]

Recording the whole transactions happened in the network is necessary to be available in all nodes so as to ensure that all transactions recorded on the block chain is valid. You can opt to run a SPV wallet and having that doesn't require you to download all of that 40 GB, only the wallet client and that's it (though you don't have all the functionalities that the Qt client have).

but no one has ssd space for 40gb.

As far as I know, there are 512 GB SSDs already in the market. What do you mean exactly with this?

Well, those are quite expensive, cost about 250$. I have a 128gb ssd i bought a couple years ago for 150$, and with my OS on it and basic programs, I only have 7gb free on it.

Newegg has a 500 GB SSD right now for $169 + $0.99 shipping, so $170 for 500 GB shipped to your door. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100008118%204814%20600038491

These prices will only get cheaper as time, and the blockchain growth, go on.

If you only have a few BTC, as has been pointed out a SPV wallet might work fine. For those with more BTC and/or like running a full node, I do not think $170 is too much to ask for a SSD that will last many years of block-chain growth. If you used a dedicated drive just for the blockchain, you could possibly get by with a 256 GB which can be acquired for under $100.

Also, there is no reason you need to store the block chain on a SSD, you can keep this data on an normal HDD which would make the price issue almost irrelevant.

[uxgpf]

I do coding and programming, so naturally I have to use the bitcoin client and bitcoind servers. I have found that the current 40gb size of them is actually too big, and it is increasing exponentially now. When it was 20gb, thats fine I guess, but having 40gb+ necessary space just to run the client, and you have to wait days to download it, thats when it starts to get hard to use for the average guy. To get a server from digitalocean that has this much space, thats 40 dollars a month. SSDs are optimal because of the constant reading and writing, but no one has ssd space for 40gb.
In the future, the blockchain will ONLY get bigger, and eventually something must be done about it. Maybe something like having the option to only save blocks if they have relation to you in the personal client. The entire blockchain is stored on bitcoin-qt, but is this really necessary? There is no blockchain search feature in the client, and having other people's transactions is useless to me and can't even query them.
I think that this number is getting too big, and it is increasing very quickly.

Blockchain pruning was added in bitcoin 0.11, but doesn't support wallet yet. Pruning is enabled with -prune flag. (minimum allowed is 512 MB IIRC). It still needs to download the whole blockchain to validate it, so syncing takes time, but storage space is saved.

Here's an example:

Code:

$ (bitcoind -prune 4096&)

Code:

$ bitcoin-cli getblockchaininfo
{
    "chain" : "main",
    "blocks" : 372426,
    "headers" : 372426,
    "bestblockhash" : "00000000000000000380ecd0b5397445569a08eee5522dc786
622fe9551db586",
    "difficulty" : 54256630327.88996124,
    "verificationprogress" : 0.99998490,
    "chainwork" : "00000000000000000000000000000000000000000009c057d121a7
a1f435110d",
    "pruned" : true,
    "pruneheight" : 365168
}

Code:

$ du -h .bitcoin/blocks
57M	.bitcoin/blocks/index
4.0G	.bitcoin/blocks

Full validating node with just 4 GB of blocks, nice eh?