please delete

[ranochigo]

On the other hand with bitcoin your utxos do cost the network storage costs. So that's the difference. They have to maintain your utxos in the utxo set until you decide to use them or someone decides to use them. So they have an ongoing cost for maintaining your bitcoin. You can't expect them to front that cost however minimal forever, right? No you can't That's why ever so often you need to do transactions and pay transaction fees.

Storage costs are quite minimal. None of the network nodes are ever compensated for storing the blockchain, we aren't a PoS coin.

UTXO is the factor that isn't really all that significant. The size fluctuates at about 4GB right now, and people are incentivized to try to have as little UTXO as possible because a bigger UTXO entails a greater transaction size to create and to spend. As opposed to the 4GB UTXO being an issue, I would argue that the nearly 400GB of block data would be a better point to argue from. Block data grows linearly while UTXO doesn't necessarily have the same growth.

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[Syke]

You can't expect them to front that cost however minimal forever, right?

Damn right I do. It's none of anyone's business if my wallets are lost or it's just my choice to not touch them.

[larry_vw_1955]

Damn right I do. It's none of anyone's business if my wallets are lost or it's just my choice to not touch them.

The only problem with that unspendable utxos impose a burden on the bitcoin network (the rest of us). The only way to deal with that is by cleaning out the utxo set periodically.

I would argue that the nearly 400GB of block data would be a better point to argue from. Block data grows linearly while UTXO doesn't necessarily have the same growth.

yeah that really needs to be looked at because I have no interest in storing 400GB on a hard drive. Let alone ten times that.

UTXO is the factor that isn't really all that significant. The size fluctuates at about 4GB right now, and people are incentivized to try to have as little UTXO as possible because a bigger UTXO entails a greater transaction size to create and to spend.

Satoshi being the genius that he was I wonder why he didn't come up with a way that miners would auto-consolidate utxos from the utxo set as part of their normal mining process. That way, each address would only have a single utxo associated with it. Under normal circumstances.  Kind of like an account based system but not really.

[ranochigo]

The only problem with that unspendable utxos impose a burden on the bitcoin network (the rest of us). The only way to deal with that is by cleaning out the utxo set periodically.

It doesn't... Relative to the rest of the spam that the network has to deal with. UTXOs are always getting added and deleted so the growth shouldn't be that significant. If your logic is that each UTXO imposes a burden on the network, then each transaction imposes a much higher burden than that, for which there is zero compensation to the nodes. How do we go about solving that?

Satoshi being the genius that he was I wonder why he didn't come up with a way that miners would auto-consolidate utxos from the utxo set as part of their normal mining process. That way, each address would only have a single utxo associated with it. Under normal circumstances.  Kind of like an account based system but not really.

Either you go with an account based system or you go without, there is no inbetween.

Ideally, each address should only have 1 UTXO, that is the intention of Satoshi, for privacy reasons. Wallets are always encouraging this behavior to their user to discourage address reuse, by the use of change address and a new address every transaction. No one really thought that UTXO set is really significant in size... Full (and unpruned nodes) aren't for everyone, so I don't think everyone have to run a full node, if they don't want to.

[ABCbits]

Damn right I do. It's none of anyone's business if my wallets are lost or it's just my choice to not touch them.

The only problem with that unspendable utxos impose a burden on the bitcoin network (the rest of us). The only way to deal with that is by cleaning out the utxo set periodically.

It's not serious problem, UTXO grow rapidly in last few years, but AFAIK it doesn't have big impact on cost of running full node. Raspberry Pi still can run full node at ease.

I would argue that the nearly 400GB of block data would be a better point to argue from. Block data grows linearly while UTXO doesn't necessarily have the same growth.

yeah that really needs to be looked at because I have no interest in storing 400GB on a hard drive. Let alone ten times that.

Then you should use pruned mode on Bitcoin Core or just don't run full node.

[Syke]

The only problem with that unspendable utxos impose a burden on the bitcoin network (the rest of us). The only way to deal with that is by cleaning out the utxo set periodically.

Will you listen to Satoshi?

You should never delete a wallet.

Wallets/UTXOs *never* expire.

[DaveF]

It's just my opinion but, why should this be any different?

-Dave

You may not agree but it is different. Way different. Gold that you hold and pass down to generations doesn't impose any cost upon any type of infrastructure. And if it did, you would have to pay fees. Like for storing it or getting it appraised or recasting it into some other form. But if you just store it under your bed, you're not imposing any type of cost to anyone else.

On the other hand with bitcoin your utxos do cost the network storage costs. So that's the difference. They have to maintain your utxos in the utxo set until you decide to use them or someone decides to use them. So they have an ongoing cost for maintaining your bitcoin. You can't expect them to front that cost however minimal forever, right? No you can't That's why ever so often you need to do transactions and pay transaction fees.

Storage costs are always dropping.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-cost-per-gigabyte/

Although that chart only goes to 2017 and I do know that with the current supply chain / semiconductor issues at the moment the price drops have shrunk the cost of storage in terms of running a node have really not changed by any large amount.

You don't need the newest & fastest PC to run a node. There seems to be a 'fixed bottom cost' of a running & working old used PC at around $50. And those are fine for running a node.
And as others have pointed out the UTXO storage vs the rest of the blockchain is not that large.

-Dave

[Shymaa-Arafat]

If the principal of dropping UTXOS is there & allowed, why don't u drop holding 1 Satoshi or less than dust limit
& They're probably old anyway

[Dabs]

Satoshi being the genius that he was I wonder why he didn't come up with a way that miners would auto-consolidate utxos from the utxo set as part of their normal mining process. That way, each address would only have a single utxo associated with it. Under normal circumstances.  Kind of like an account based system but not really.

He didn't have to. As indicated, hard drive space is always going up too. Satoshi said something to that effect, and also something about all block headers or transactions fitting in a small space.


As for Opendimes, I like the concept, it's essentially a cold wallet or one of those physical coins with private keys / more advanced paper wallet. Perhaps for trading purposes, something like Opendimes would do when you have 0.01 BTC in several and you hand it over to someone else when buying stuff.

If I ever got one of those, I would of course sweep them immediately to my own form of cold storage.

Again, Opendimes do not use P2PK. Not many wallets today use P2PK. If you have an old address, it's probably not P2PK, and those will always be spendable in the future if you still have the private keys.

It's the P2PK public keys that we're talking about. Not addresses beginning with 1 or 3 or bc1.

I have no issues if there is no consensus ever about these public keys and nothing is done about them. They are likely to remain unspent in the next several decades and no one today uses these types of keys. With version 22 of the Core wallet released, we should also start seeing new Taproot addresses soon, maybe.

[vapourminer]

Damn right I do. It's none of anyone's business if my wallets are lost or it's just my choice to not touch them.

The only problem with that unspendable utxos impose a burden on the bitcoin network (the rest of us). The only way to deal with that is by cleaning out the utxo set periodically.

I would argue that the nearly 400GB of block data would be a better point to argue from. Block data grows linearly while UTXO doesn't necessarily have the same growth.

yeah that really needs to be looked at because BTC. Let alone ten times that.

400 gb? geeze you should see my steam folders size.

i run a full unpruned node, gave it a 500 gb ssd, which will last until a 1tb ssd is the price of dirt..

anyway i like my old UTXOs thank you. and the network will still have them ready for me years from now. thats how bitcoin works.

[DaveF]

...
Again, Opendimes do not use P2PK. Not many wallets today use P2PK. If you have an old address, it's probably not P2PK, and those will always be spendable in the future if you still have the private keys.

It's the P2PK public keys that we're talking about. Not addresses beginning with 1 or 3 or bc1.
..

Agree with you 100%

Does not matter if it's P2PK public keys or a traditional (1... or 3... or bc1...) address as you said the coins should never be touched.
larry_vw_1955 wants to change that.
What happens in the future when someone else decides that the bc1... is bad and should be invalidated or some other crap.

-Dave

[larry_vw_1955]

It doesn't... Relative to the rest of the spam that the network has to deal with. UTXOs are always getting added and deleted so the growth shouldn't be that significant. If your logic is that each UTXO imposes a burden on the network, then each transaction imposes a much higher burden than that, for which there is zero compensation to the nodes. How do we go about solving that?

I get the feeling that your question is somewhat rhetorical in nature and that you don't really believe that anything needs to be "solved". But there are possible solutions to the blockchain size issue. I even thought of one myself recently. Actually 2 of them. I'll share one of them here. the other deserves a bigger platform like its own thread maybe!

Just take a snapshot of the utxo set after mining block #XYZ. The utxo set at that time will becomes the new genesis block. And that is all that would need to be saved. Rince and repeat every 10 years or so. Bitcoin purists and crypto historians can enjoy keeping the old blockchain and actually seeing how things got to the state they are in if they want to while the network goes on about its business in a more efficient manner.

Either you go with an account based system or you go without, there is no inbetween.

See my comment above.

[ranochigo]

I get the feeling that your question is somewhat rhetorical in nature and that you don't really believe that anything needs to be "solved". But there are possible solutions to the blockchain size issue. I even thought of one myself recently. Actually 2 of them. I'll share one of them here. the other deserves a bigger platform like its own thread maybe!

Just take a snapshot of the utxo set after mining block #XYZ. The utxo set at that time will becomes the new genesis block. And that is all that would need to be saved. Rince and repeat every 10 years or so. Bitcoin purists and crypto historians can enjoy keeping the old blockchain and actually seeing how things got to the state they are in if they want to while the network goes on about its business in a more efficient manner.

It wasn't really a rhetorical question. Given how the argument is centered about UTXO size, I was wondering if you were concerned about blockchain size as well.

I think this "solution" has been discussed quite a few times, and I don't really find it an issue anymore. We've had pruning for quite a few years now, and it describes exactly what you're talking about. Where users choose to save how much block data they need while discarding the rest and retaining the UTXO. If you prefer to trust someone to tell you what is right at a certain point of time, instead of validating yourself, then it would be better to just use an SPV wallet. I don't expect the majority to require a full node and in the near future, SPV nodes should fulfill their needs instead of wasting their resources to run a full node if they are unable to.

Anyhow, throughout my time here, I've seen this solution being proposed more than a dozen times. The reason why the UTXO commitment or blockchain truncating isn't viable right now is that the user has to trust that the commitment is accurate and isn't intentionally manipulated. I would think that this only serves to solve the problem with regards to the storage space, for which pruning is sufficient.

[larry_vw_1955]

As for Opendimes, I like the concept, it's essentially a cold wallet or one of those physical coins with private keys / more advanced paper wallet. Perhaps for trading purposes, something like Opendimes would do when you have 0.01 BTC in several and you hand it over to someone else when buying stuff.

Maybe 0.001 btc but 0.01 BTC is like $5000. I don't think I woudl trust an opendime to that much money. But I guess it's all relative. If someone can afford to lose 5 grand and it wouldn't hurt them then maybe they would be fine with having an opendime lying around with that much on it. It really is like a ticking time bomb until you take off the funds.

El Salvador should be coming out with their own bitcoin bearer bond bank notes anytime soon though...hopefully they won't go off the "bitcoin standard" though. Because paper money has a way of becoming worthless. there absolutely has to be bitcoins in the bank vault backing up that printed paper I tell ya.

Err I think my math was wrong. 0.01 BTC is $500 but still. For some people that's alot of cash. But maybe worth the risk of losing it just for the coolness factor.

[larry_vw_1955]

Storage costs are always dropping.

yeah just like cpu speeds are always getting faster. not.

that's why in that article you linked to, we see them stating "As you’ll see, the hard drive pricing curve has flattened out."  there's a reason the pricing curves flatten out and it's due to business economics.

[tromp]

Maybe 0.001 btc but 0.01 BTC is like $5000.

More like $500.

[larry_vw_1955]

It wasn't really a rhetorical question. Given how the argument is centered about UTXO size, I was wondering if you were concerned about blockchain size as well.

Yeah of course, I'm concerned about it. Unless you download the entire blockchain then you can't really interact fully with it.

I think this "solution" has been discussed quite a few times, and I don't really find it an issue anymore. We've had pruning for quite a few years now, and it describes exactly what you're talking about. Where users choose to save how much block data they need while discarding the rest and retaining the UTXO.

they still have to download the entire blockchain though. and keep it updated. that's kind of a hassle.

Anyhow, throughout my time here, I've seen this solution being proposed more than a dozen times. The reason why the UTXO commitment or blockchain truncating isn't viable right now is that the user has to trust that the commitment is accurate and isn't intentionally manipulated. I would think that this only serves to solve the problem with regards to the storage space, for which pruning is sufficient.

Once the network come to a consensus about the new genesys block it wuold be just like satoshi's genesys block. everyone could trust it just as much. there's always a risk of the things you mentioned even without doing this. As time goes on, less and less people/organizations are going to maintain a copy of the entire blockchain. Maybe oneday no one will have an entire copy. That would be a pretty bad situation.

Will you listen to Satoshi?

Quote from: satoshi
You should never delete a wallet.

Wallets/UTXOs *never* expire.

I never heard that one before but if Satoshi said that then I guess I have to rethink my idea about making utxos expire. I can't be contradicting the man.

[ranochigo]

they still have to download the entire blockchain though. and keep it updated. that's kind of a hassle.

Once the network come to a consensus about the new genesys block it wuold be just like satoshi's genesys block. everyone could trust it just as much. there's always a risk of the things you mentioned even without doing this. As time goes on, less and less people/organizations are going to maintain a copy of the entire blockchain. Maybe oneday no one will have an entire copy. That would be a pretty bad situation.

Why do you need a full node? For the majority, any SPV clients would suffice and it wouldn't incur that much resource usage as well.

The problem with a snapshot is that someone has to define the interval or the block height for which it occurs, and the consensus will never be reached on that. The decision will ultimately fall with a certain group of people instead of the community as a whole. Satoshi's genesis block was universally defined as the block zero, for which the first Bitcoin client was shipped with, there was no consensus about that. I find having to trust someone on the state of the blockchain, instead of verifying it as a whole would just be akin to me using a SPV client.

The issue that you've stated so far is not a pressing issue at all. The HDD argument is not very valid; areal density is improving year on year and the reason the price has decreased is due to the cost of production and the increase in HDD density.

I never heard that one before but if Satoshi said that then I guess I have to rethink my idea about making utxos expire. I can't be contradicting the man.

Not saying that we shouldn't follow that but it really doesn't make sense. Bitcoin belongs to the community, not to Satoshi. It really doesn't matter what he says, just look at the issue on its practicality as well as the ethics of it. On this issue, the problem lies with the ethics.

[ABCbits]

It doesn't... Relative to the rest of the spam that the network has to deal with. UTXOs are always getting added and deleted so the growth shouldn't be that significant. If your logic is that each UTXO imposes a burden on the network, then each transaction imposes a much higher burden than that, for which there is zero compensation to the nodes. How do we go about solving that?

I get the feeling that your question is somewhat rhetorical in nature and that you don't really believe that anything needs to be "solved". But there are possible solutions to the blockchain size issue. I even thought of one myself recently. Actually 2 of them. I'll share one of them here. the other deserves a bigger platform like its own thread maybe!

Just take a snapshot of the utxo set after mining block #XYZ. The utxo set at that time will becomes the new genesis block. And that is all that would need to be saved. Rince and repeat every 10 years or so. Bitcoin purists and crypto historians can enjoy keeping the old blockchain and actually seeing how things got to the state they are in if they want to while the network goes on about its business in a more efficient manner.

Similar technology already exist and it's called "UTXO commitment". The difference are,
1. It doesn't delete all older block before snapshot. So it;s possible to verify whether the snapshot itself is valid.
2. The goal is to speed up node sync process. Node have option to blindly trust it or verify it later after downloading whole block.

Or just use SPV wallet if you can't or don't want afford to run full node.

[Dabs]

As time goes on, less and less people/organizations are going to maintain a copy of the entire blockchain. Maybe oneday no one will have an entire copy. That would be a pretty bad situation.

Unlikely. There are lots of companies that do not delete tons of data. All the social media networks. ...

There are plenty of otherwise "normal" people with large hard drives that keep data and backups of those data.

And, there are the ever present pirates who hoard abandoned software and games and movies with terabytes of storage.

Someone will always be keeping the entire copy. Right now, that's at least 10k full nodes, and another 20k lightning nodes (I think they need to be full nodes as well).

I do like the idea of committed transactions and summary "re-genesis" blocks, but I don't think that will be a problem for several decades, and by then maybe storage will have advanced and become cheaper. Mobile phones will be 10 TB in 10 years, and your average low budget laptop would be running on 16 to 20 TB SSDs.

For anyone who stores more than a few thousand dollars worth of bitcoin, it would not be a bad idea to run a full node that costs a hundred bucks.