How you will pay for Bitcoin network access services in the future

[Littleshop]

I think Gavin has alluded to possibly rewarding those who run full nodes, which I think is the way to go. I don't see any reason why miners should get rewarded, yet those who run full nodes and eat the bandwidth/disk space get nothing.

When running a node becomes expensive enough that people can't do it for free you'll still be able to find full nodes willing to accept incoming connections. You'll pay for that service in a variety of ways:

1) Transaction fees: You connect directly to a miner who lets you do so because they want your transaction fees. They may require some # of transactions per unit time, and part of the agreement may be that you only send transactions to them. (easily verified) In return they'll run your bloom filter against incoming blocks, although don't be surprised if they force you to give them a bloom filter specific enough to identify exactly what addresses are in your wallet as part of the deal.

2) Pay-for-service: You pay for the service directly. In return they resend your transactions to miners to get them mined, possibly with preferential deals (kickbacks) that may or may not be public knowledge. They also run your bloom filter against the blockchain, and again, they may or may let you do so in a non-specific manner. Given AML regulations I wouldn't be surprised if the services that operate out in the open only allow you to tell them what addresses you are interested rather than a bloom filter obscuring that information. (AML rules apply to case #1 too)

3) Datamining: Google and other search engines already provide a lot of services purely in return for the data they can gather. The blockchain itself is a rich source of transaction data, made richer by figuring out the real identities behind the pseudonymous addresses on it. Just like #1 and #2 if you can determine who is sending what transactions and owns what addresses you can integrate that into a rich dataset to do things like get real-world information on what vendors are actually popular, which in turn can feed search engine results and other services.

It'll be interesting to see how AML regulations apply to all these services in the future. I suspect they'll eventually be subject to the same know-your-customer rules as any other financial service provider to help authorities link identities to Bitcoin addresses. This doesn't have to be very intrusive: in case #3 that might be as simple as using your Google login to authenticate with Google's Bitcoin servers.

Since running a node will not be hard for someone with infrastructure, small companies (like mine) could run one and just give it out to customers few or no strings attached.  Even if it cost $100 a month it would be good advertising and a customer perk that spread out over many customers really costs almost nothing. 

Enthusiasts could also just run a node for family and friends.  I have seen people spend thousands of dollars on gaming PC's, spending $1000 for good hardware for a full node will not be a problem for people into it. 

[solex]

Since running a node will not be hard for someone with infrastructure, small companies (like mine) could run one and just give it out to customers few or no strings attached.  Even if it cost $100 a month it would be good advertising and a customer perk that spread out over many customers really costs almost nothing.  

Enthusiasts could also just run a node for family and friends.  I have seen people spend thousands of dollars on gaming PC's, spending $1000 for good hardware for a full node will not be a problem for people into it.  

Yep. Very sensible indeed, but you might as well talk to retep's hand, because the face doesn't understand.

retep is 100% convinced that scaling Bitcoin will lead to centralization as small hobbyist and home nodes drop off due to bandwidth and storage requirements.

However, his dream solution is a nightmare worse than the problem.
He would have the blockchain reserved for big banks, millionaires and "important" users willing to pay $20 per transaction. Everyone else being forced to go through 3rd parties for their Bitcoin transfers.

He ignores that in his scenario all the thousands of Bitcoin hobbyists with nodes at home are going to switch off their Bitcoin software if they are effectively banned from the using the blockchain because of sky-high fees. It will actually create the centralization which he detests.

The solution is scaling Bitcoin by encouraging small businesses such as yours (Littleshop) to pick up the slack, adding higher capacity nodes and maintaining decentralization, and a blockchain available to all users with fees of a few cents. This is the future we need.

[mobile4ever]

The solution is scaling Bitcoin by encouraging small businesses such as yours (Littleshop) to pick up the slack, adding higher capacity nodes and maintaining decentralization, and a blockchain available to all users with fees of a few cents. This is the future we need.

If "Moore's Law" is still valid, the technology will keep up with bitcoin. We first used CPUs, then GPUs.. now we have come to ASICS. It is possible that something else is around the corner. 

[jl2012]

AML makes no sense. One can provide this service with offshore hosting, or even as tor hidden service.

[halfawake]

I did some quick calculations a little while ago and calculated that at the current rate of growth of the blockchain, it'll be at 60 GB in five years.  (I'm running a full node on my computer.)  The key phrase there is, of course, current rate of growth.  But assuming it continues as it is, I don't see hard drive space being a problem. 

Bandwidth?  That's another question entirely.  I'm running basic DSL right now and it's not really impacting my internet speed negatively.  So long as that doesn't change in the future, the bandwidth affect it has is fairly negible.  Again, that assumes that the bandwidth requirements of a full node will be the same with a 60 GB blockchain size as they are with a 8.91 GB blockchain size.  (Current blockchain size as of today.)  That is of course probably not a valid conclusion. 

If the webhost I'm planning on using when I host my business offered unlimited storage, I'd happily host a bitcoin node there.  Unfortunately, it "only" offers 100 GB and I'd rather not see my entire web hosting space eaten up by the bitcoin blockchain in several years.

Now, if anyone wants to persuade Google to roll out their Google Fiber nationwide, I don't think the bandwidth constraints of the blockchain would ever be an issue.  I'd happily pay the $70 / month they're asking for a gigabit internet connection.