I've read somewhere in 4 years the blockchain will be 700GB

[manselr]

I remember reading this here the other day I think, and it was at a 1MB blocksize rate.... I would guess that in 4 years maybe the blockchain has been increased, at least doubled.

Anyway, let's imagine it doesnt, and we stay at 1MB.... what do you think the price for 700GB will be in 4 years? If things don't change much, it means running a node will take almost an entire HD (let's say the usual HD size is 1TB).

What happens once the size goes beyond 1TB, or beyond the biggest HD? what happens when you can't fit the blocksize in a regular HDs? Can you run 3/4 of the blockchain then the remaining 1/4 part in another HD?

[achow101]

The block size? The block size is most definitely not going to by 700 Gb. That's way to large. You're probably thinking of the blockchain size. The blockchain currently grows at a rate of 144 MB per day. With Segwit, it can grow at a maximum of 576 MB per day. You can then extrapolate that to the maximum size the blockchain at any point in time.

What happens once the size goes beyond 1TB, or beyond the biggest HD? what happens when you can't fit the blocksize in a regular HDs? Can you run 3/4 of the blockchain then the remaining 1/4 part in another HD?

Hard drive capacity will continue to increase, and it will most certainly outpace the growth of the blockchain. Disk space gets cheaper by the day. The concern should really be on bandwidth, CPU, and RAM bottlenecs. It takes a lot of bandwidth to download the entire blockchain and a lot of CPU and memory to process all of that data.

[TransaDox]

Hard drive capacity will continue to increase, and it will most certainly outpace the growth of the blockchain. Disk space gets cheaper by the day.

You've been excellent at answering many questions on many threads then you come out with this tired trope. Please don't disseminate this rubbish. It's not, and has never been, a solution. It is the bitcoin equivalent of "Have faith that God shall provide".

[MadGamer]

The block size? The block size is most definitely not going to by 700 Gb. That's way to large. You're probably thinking of the blockchain size. The blockchain currently grows at a rate of 144 MB per day. With Segwit, it can grow at a maximum of 576 MB per day. You can then extrapolate that to the maximum size the blockchain at any point in time.

What happens once the size goes beyond 1TB, or beyond the biggest HD? what happens when you can't fit the blocksize in a regular HDs? Can you run 3/4 of the blockchain then the remaining 1/4 part in another HD?

Hard drive capacity will continue to increase, and it will most certainly outpace the growth of the blockchain. Disk space gets cheaper by the day. The concern should really be on bandwidth, CPU, and RAM bottlenecs. It takes a lot of bandwidth to download the entire blockchain and a lot of CPU and memory to process all of that data.

Isn't SegWit supposed to make things smaller instead of bigger ? at least his is what I got from this infographic https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/43sjfz/the_bitcoin_core_roadmap_explained_i_made_an/

"Does it decrease the amount of information needed to secure the blockchain and therebefore make syncing with the blockchain faster you ask ? Why yes , yes It does"

[manselr]

The block size? The block size is most definitely not going to by 700 Gb. That's way to large. You're probably thinking of the blockchain size. The blockchain currently grows at a rate of 144 MB per day. With Segwit, it can grow at a maximum of 576 MB per day. You can then extrapolate that to the maximum size the blockchain at any point in time.

What happens once the size goes beyond 1TB, or beyond the biggest HD? what happens when you can't fit the blocksize in a regular HDs? Can you run 3/4 of the blockchain then the remaining 1/4 part in another HD?

Hard drive capacity will continue to increase, and it will most certainly outpace the growth of the blockchain. Disk space gets cheaper by the day. The concern should really be on bandwidth, CPU, and RAM bottlenecs. It takes a lot of bandwidth to download the entire blockchain and a lot of CPU and memory to process all of that data.

Yeah I made a mistake, I meant to say blockchain. I post when I take a break from my job and my head is thinking about a lot of things at the same time.

But even if the price of HDs keep going lower, what happens if someday the blockchain is growing fast enough to be bigger than the average HD? I don't see average HD size getting higher than 1TB in the near future (I mean the average person doesn't need more than 1TB..)

[achow101]

Isn't SegWit supposed to make things smaller instead of bigger ? at least his is what I got from this infographic https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/43sjfz/the_bitcoin_core_roadmap_explained_i_made_an/

No. Segwit will make things bigger, like a block size increase. Something has to get bigger in order to allow more transactions.

Yeah I made a mistake, I meant to say blockchain. I post when I take a break from my job and my head is thinking about a lot of things at the same time.

But even if the price of HDs keep going lower, what happens if someday the blockchain is growing fast enough to be bigger than the average HD? I don't see average HD size getting higher than 1TB in the near future (I mean the average person doesn't need more than 1TB..)

That is an invalid argument. 20 years ago the average person didn't need more than 100 GB of storage. File sizes have been getting progressively larger. Just because something is that way now doesn't mean it won't change in the future.

[manselr]

Isn't SegWit supposed to make things smaller instead of bigger ? at least his is what I got from this infographic https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/43sjfz/the_bitcoin_core_roadmap_explained_i_made_an/

No. Segwit will make things bigger, like a block size increase. Something has to get bigger in order to allow more transactions.

Yeah I made a mistake, I meant to say blockchain. I post when I take a break from my job and my head is thinking about a lot of things at the same time.

But even if the price of HDs keep going lower, what happens if someday the blockchain is growing fast enough to be bigger than the average HD? I don't see average HD size getting higher than 1TB in the near future (I mean the average person doesn't need more than 1TB..)

That is an invalid argument. 20 years ago the average person didn't need more than 100 GB of storage. File sizes have been getting progressively larger. Just because something is that way now doesn't mean it won't change in the future.

Yeah but I mean in 4 years.

I don't see anyone I know needing more than 1 TB in 4 years, yet, if they wanted to run a bitcoin node, they would run out of space with their regular 1 TB HD which is more than enough for most people. People no longer store movies etc, since connections are so good that you can stream them in HD. So most HD space goes for games, and 1 TB is more than enough. The average computer user will not need more than 1 TB in 4 years at all.

[TransaDox]

20 years ago the average person didn't need more than 100 GB of storage. File sizes have been getting progressively larger. Just because something is that way now doesn't mean it won't change in the future.

Sigh!   Yet still the full nodes keep diminishing.

[achow101]

Yeah but I mean in 4 years.

I don't see anyone I know needing more than 1 TB in 4 years, yet, if they wanted to run a bitcoin node, they would run out of space with their regular 1 TB HD which is more than enough for most people. People no longer store movies etc, since connections are so good that you can stream them in HD. So most HD space goes for games, and 1 TB is more than enough. The average computer user will not need more than 1 TB in 4 years at all.

We aren't going to hit 1 TB in 4 years.

You're still going to need programs, games, etc. Everything that you can't store in the cloud. Furthermore, I think there will be shift towards offline storage again because of mass surveillance by organizations like the NSA who go to the cloud hosting companies and ask them for user data.

[DannyHamilton]

I don't see anyone I know needing more than 1 TB in 4 years, yet, if they wanted to run a bitcoin node, they would run out of space with their regular 1 TB HD

No.  They wouldn't.

The math is quite simple and very clear that we won't exceed 1TB in 4 years unless block sizes get MUCH larger (more than 4X today's 1 MB size).  They are currently limited to 1 megabyte.

Bitcoin has been running for 8 years now and the blockchain is less than 90 gigabytes.  If we grow at double that rate in the next 4 years, then the blockchain will only be 135 GB.

If EVERY blocks is COMPLETELY full at 1 MB per block for the next 4 years, it will only grow to 300.4 GB.

If block sizes are doubled with a hard fork, and EVERY block is COMPLETELY full at 2 MB per block, it will only grow to 510.8 GB.

Try the math yourself.

Take the size (in megabytes) you think the block will grow to after a hard fork.  Multiply that by 144 (blocks per day).  Multiply that by 365.25 (average days per year).  Multiply that by the number of years you want to know about.  Add 90,000 and the result will be the size of the blockchain (in mgabytes) at that time.

[arulbero]

1.6 Mega (after segwit) * 144 * 365 = 80 Giga per year

80 * 4 + 90 = 410 GB    by the end of 2020

What happens once the size goes beyond 1TB?

It will be happening in 12 years' time.

[Abdussamad]

Bitcoin has been running for 8 years now and the blockchain is less than 90 megabytes.  If we double that size in the next 4 years, then the blockchain will only be 135 MB.

You seem to have MBs and GBs confused which is very out of character. I'm guessing they are typos. Might want to correct them.

Hard drive capacity will continue to increase, and it will most certainly outpace the growth of the blockchain. Disk space gets cheaper by the day.

You've been excellent at answering many questions on many threads then you come out with this tired trope. Please don't disseminate this rubbish. It's not, and has never been, a solution. It is the bitcoin equivalent of "Have faith that God shall provide".

Bitcoin was designed with the advancement of technology in mind. The whole difficulty adjustment thing is to ensure that, even as CPUs get faster, we continue to get blocks that are 10 minutes apart on average. If you feel that expecting technology to continue to advance is wrong then you should find some other hobby. Forget about bitcoin.

[DannyHamilton]

- snip -

You seem to have MBs and GBs confused which is very out of character. I'm guessing they are typos. Might want to correct them.

Yep.

There I am explaining how easy the math is, and yet I get my units mixed up and make a mess of everything.  Thanks for catching it.  I think I've fixed it, but at this point I'm a but burned out today and don't have much confidence in my ability to add and subtract.

[TransaDox]

Bitcoin was designed with the advancement of technology in mind. The whole difficulty adjustment thing is to ensure that, even as CPUs get faster, we continue to get blocks that are 10 minutes apart on average. If you feel that expecting technology to continue to advance is wrong then you should find some other hobby. Forget about bitcoin.

Condescending much? It's like arguing with creationists!  

It's not a case of forgetting about bitcoin. It's about preventing it becoming purely a back end service for VISA, Paypal and Western Union.

[pepethefrog]

I remember reading this here the other day I think, and it was at a 1MB blocksize rate....

The thread you are talking about is

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1612543.0

Pepe saw this thread too, but is not convinced by the wild assumptions made in this thread.

[coinerer]

Let assume 10% growth of the blockchain monthly. Quite real assumption.

It means growth of 3x every year.

It means blockchain growth of 81x every 4 years.

Exponential low.

This may be somewhat slower or faster which depends on the real world acceptance of bitcoin.

I think bitcoin and other virtual coin will remain "good" communitiy experiment only. Tools for "playing" on the exchanges and creating very few very rich people - it depends on the "communities" again.

[piotr_n]

FWIW, the biggest segwit block so far on testnet (#894090) is 3876524 bytes.

So, had all of them been as big as that one, it's 144*365*3876524, giving almost 204 GB per year.

Some method of snapshoting an entire UTXO set, at each/certain chain height and broadcasting/distributing these snapshots in a secured way - this is becoming more and more desirable... Not to say necessary.

But after it's finally done and accepted by the network, the blockchain size should not matter much anymore.

[calkob]

Yeah would seg wit not make a difference to this calculation now ?

[kushti]

FWIW, the biggest segwit block so far on testnet (#894090) is 3876524 bytes.

So, had all of them been as big as that one, it's 144*365*3876524, giving almost 204 GB per year.

Some method of snapshoting an entire UTXO set, at each/certain chain height and broadcasting/distributing these snapshots in a secured way - this is becoming more and more desirable... Not to say necessary.

But after it's finally done and accepted by the network, the blockchain size should not matter much anymore.

I already put a link to this draft of mine in one similar thread here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.07926 . Going to polish it soon to announce then widely. PoW has ben changed(to solve incentives problem as well), so Bitcoin can't go this way definitely.

[TransaDox]

I already put a link to this draft of mine in one similar thread here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.07926 . Going to polish it soon to announce then widely. PoW has ben changed(to solve incentives problem as well), so Bitcoin can't go this way definitely.

There is no will to resolve this issue. indeed. It is being actively resisted because....money. It seems that many of those that are worried about it are only interested because it is the last thing they might be able to monetise because mining is now out of their reach.  

Only people trying to create new coins would need to run
network nodes.  At first, most users would run network nodes, but as the
network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to
specialists with server farms of specialized hardware.  A server farm would
only need to have one node on the network and the rest of the LAN connects with
that one node.

Satoshi Nakamoto