Eventual size of blockchain?

[tkbx]

I was thinking about the concept of the blockchain, and it seems unsustainable. What happens if Bitcoin is still in use in 40 years? Will we have 2048GB SSDs to store the blockchain on? Imagine if every USD transaction ever hat to be permanently logged, wouldn't we run out of storage space pretty quickly?

[Killdozer]

Aaaand the round 9002 is on!
I call dibs on the "hard drives are going to grow faster than the blockchain" argument!

[justusranvier]

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability#Storage

[hazek]

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability#Storage

Storage

At very high transaction rates each block can be over half a gigabyte in size.

It is not required for most fully validating nodes to store the entire chain. In Satoshis paper he describes "pruning", a way to delete unnecessary data about transactions that are fully spent. This reduces the amount of data that is needed for a fully validating node to be only the size of the current unspent output size, plus some additional data that is needed to handle re-orgs. As of October 2012 (block 203258) there have been 7,979,231 transactions, however the size of the unspent output set is less than 100MiB, which is small enough to easily fit in RAM for even quite old computers.

Only a small number of archival nodes need to store the full chain going back to the genesis block. These nodes can be used to bootstrap new fully validating nodes from scratch but are otherwise unnecessary.

The primary limiting factor in Bitcoins performance is disk seeks once the unspent transaction output set stops fitting in memory. It is quite possible that the set will always fit in memory on dedicated server class machines, if hardware advances faster than Bitcoin usage does.

Ok, but is this being developed or is this just theory?

[justusranvier]

Ok, but is this being developed or is this just theory?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88208.0

[hazek]

Ok, but is this being developed or is this just theory?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88208.0

I know about that but I haven't seen anyone state (read lead dev) that working on that idea is currently a priority.

[finway]

Ok, but is this being developed or is this just theory?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88208.0

I know about that but I haven't seen anyone state (read lead dev) that working on that idea is currently a priority.

You can delete old files in directory "blocks"

[auzaar]

2048 GB in 40 years is nothing , consider this

YEAR — Price of a Gigabyte (ref: http://blog.spamfighter.com/general/an-overview-of-data-storage-devices-over-time-infographic.html)

1981 — $300,000

1987 — $50,000

1990 — $10,000

1994 — $1000

1997 — $100

2000 — $10

2004 — $1

2010 — $0.10

so in 40 years we assume what happened in last 30 years will repeat, price of 2048 GB would be, basically nothing and price of bitcoin if it still there after 40 years would be tooo much, so your concern in not valid.

Even today you can buy a 2tb hard drive for 2 btc

[dancupid]

The bitcoin user-base and the blockchain are growing at an exponential rate that is outstripping Moore's law.
However that growth is limited by the number of people in the world.

At the current rate of growth the entire population of the world will be using bitcoin in 5 years (not actually likely), at which point the blockchain will maintain a linear growth rate, which will then be outstripped by Moore's law.

ie there is potentially a crossover point where the resources used by bitcoin push up against the limits of our technology. 
If Bitcoin survives beyond that moment, Moore's law will ensure that it becomes increasingly trivial to download and store the blockchain.

[finway]

However that growth is limited by the number of people in the world.

That's not true, bitcoin can be used by machines.

[herzmeister]

However that growth is limited by the number of people in the world.

No one needs more than 640K.

[organofcorti]

However that growth is limited by the number of people in the world.

That's not true, bitcoin can be used by machines.

And machine people.

[xavier]

2048 GB in 40 years is nothing , consider this

YEAR — Price of a Gigabyte (ref: http://blog.spamfighter.com/general/an-overview-of-data-storage-devices-over-time-infographic.html)

1981 — $300,000

1987 — $50,000

1990 — $10,000

1994 — $1000

1997 — $100

2000 — $10

2004 — $1

2010 — $0.10

so in 40 years we assume what happened in last 30 years will repeat, price of 2048 GB would be, basically nothing and price of bitcoin if it still there after 40 years would be tooo much, so your concern in not valid.

Even today you can buy a 2tb hard drive for 2 btc

So this has worked in the past - but why should it continue to work in the future?

There is a hard limit as to how much information can be stored on a chip. It's just we havent reached it in 30 years.

[dancupid]

However that growth is limited by the number of people in the world.

That's not true, bitcoin can be used by machines.

Machines controlled by people or independent AIs using bitcoin to buy spare parts?
The day we have AI's using bitcoin as their currency of choice, I will admit all bets are off, because that's post singularity.

[Vod]

There is a hard limit as to how much information can be stored on a chip. It's just we havent reached it in 30 years.

So then store it in your body.

Just 4g of DNA could store all the digital information created in a year on the planet.

http://www.techthefuture.com/technology/all-data-humanity-creates-in-a-year-stored-on-4-grams-of-dna/

[xavier]

There is a hard limit as to how much information can be stored on a chip. It's just we havent reached it in 30 years.

So then store it in your body.

Just 4g of DNA could store all the digital information created in a year on the planet.

http://www.techthefuture.com/technology/all-data-humanity-creates-in-a-year-stored-on-4-grams-of-dna/

So you are including DNA computing technology in your investment analysis of bitcoin? This has not even been invented yet. It's just a concept. It is ridiculous to speculate on DNA storage - it's like talking about nuclear fusion.

Its clear that for the foreseeable future, storage is not unlimited, and also bandwidth is not unlimited. The unlimited size of the blockchain; the fact that anybody can add transactions for no cost, eg. SDice. The overhead with distributing an unlimited sized file to every node. IMO, that's the bitcoin end game - ignoring any government influence.

We're already seeing the beginnings of this problem with the patch from psi that's now available, that skips SDice transactions for miners.

[alexeft]

However that growth is limited by the number of people in the world.

No one needs more than 640K.

I mean, yeah, by all means sir, no one does!!!!!

 

[dancupid]

There is a hard limit as to how much information can be stored on a chip. It's just we havent reached it in 30 years.

So then store it in your body.

Just 4g of DNA could store all the digital information created in a year on the planet.

http://www.techthefuture.com/technology/all-data-humanity-creates-in-a-year-stored-on-4-grams-of-dna/

So you are including DNA computing technology in your investment analysis of bitcoin? This has not even been invented yet. It's just a concept. It is ridiculous to speculate on DNA storage - it's like talking about nuclear fusion.

Its clear that for the foreseeable future, storage is not unlimited, and also bandwidth is not unlimited. The unlimited size of the blockchain; the fact that anybody can add transactions for no cost, eg. SDice. The overhead with distributing an unlimited sized file to every node. IMO, that's the bitcoin end game - ignoring any government influence.

We're already seeing the beginnings of this problem with the patch from psi that's now available, that skips SDice transactions for miners.

Bitcoin was designed taking into account Moore's law - ie it requires technology to develop for it to survive.

From the satoshi paper:

"With computer systems typically selling with 2GB of RAM as of 2008, and Moore's Law predicting current growth of 1.2GB per year, storage should not be a problem even if the block headers must be kept in memory"

From MS Paint (comic sans for authenticity):

[auzaar]

2048 GB in 40 years is nothing , consider this

YEAR — Price of a Gigabyte (ref: http://blog.spamfighter.com/general/an-overview-of-data-storage-devices-over-time-infographic.html)

1981 — $300,000

1987 — $50,000

1990 — $10,000

1994 — $1000

1997 — $100

2000 — $10

2004 — $1

2010 — $0.10

so in 40 years we assume what happened in last 30 years will repeat, price of 2048 GB would be, basically nothing and price of bitcoin if it still there after 40 years would be tooo much, so your concern in not valid.

Even today you can buy a 2tb hard drive for 2 btc

So this has worked in the past - but why should it continue to work in the future?

There is a hard limit as to how much information can be stored on a chip. It's just we havent reached it in 30 years.

So you are saying the trend of last 40 years will suddenly stop, even in that case as I mentioned the 2TB mentioned is not that costly right now, so in 30 years would be definitely cheaper, and these are magnetic harddisk prices, in 30 years there will be better ways to store data like 1 byte per atom, go compute!

[notme]

There is a hard limit as to how much information can be stored on a chip. It's just we havent reached it in 30 years.

So then store it in your body.

Just 4g of DNA could store all the digital information created in a year on the planet.

http://www.techthefuture.com/technology/all-data-humanity-creates-in-a-year-stored-on-4-grams-of-dna/

So you are including DNA computing technology in your investment analysis of bitcoin? This has not even been invented yet. It's just a concept. It is ridiculous to speculate on DNA storage - it's like talking about nuclear fusion.

Its clear that for the foreseeable future, storage is not unlimited, and also bandwidth is not unlimited. The unlimited size of the blockchain; the fact that anybody can add transactions for no cost, eg. SDice. The overhead with distributing an unlimited sized file to every node. IMO, that's the bitcoin end game - ignoring any government influence.

We're already seeing the beginnings of this problem with the patch from psi that's now available, that skips SDice transactions for miners.

O RLY?


Next-Generation Digital Information Storage in DNA
George M. Church, Yuan Gao, Sriram Kosuri, Published Online August 16 2012
Science 28 September 2012:
Vol. 337 no. 6102 p. 1628
DOI: 10.1126/science.1226355

Digital information is accumulating at an astounding rate, straining our ability to store and archive it. DNA is among the most dense and stable information media known. The development of new technologies in both DNA synthesis and sequencing make DNA an increasingly feasible digital storage medium. We developed a strategy to encode arbitrary digital information in DNA, wrote a 5.27-megabit book using DNA microchips, and read the book by using next-generation DNA sequencing.


EDIT:
To be clear, I agree that block size should have a limit, although it will probably need raised to more than 1 MB at some point.