A decentralized (multilayered) blockchain. Is it ever possible?

[deisik]

It is almost a given that if the Bitcoin adoption should increase multifold in the coming years, the current paradigm of a centralized blockchain is essentially doomed. I guess it will be simply impossible to process millions (billions) of transactions daily with such a blockchain where every transaction gets replicated on each of the hundreds (thousands) of nodes supporting the Bitcoin infrastructure. That would be a terrible waste of resources per se even if it could still be technically possible. So how feasible a decentralized blockchain (or something like that) would be?

Indeed, that would most certainly require a hard fork, but without such a fork, Bitcoin is bound to remain only a marginal currency at best

[Pai Mei]

but isn't the blockchain already decentralized?

[~Bitcoin~]

Quite confusing , are you suggesting fork to speed up the transactions by not storing transaction data in all the nodes of bitcoin? Are you saying it will be waste of resources (probably storage space) if current blockchain keep increasing?

Both storage space and internet bandwidth has been lot cheaper these days so this will not add much cost to run bitcoin node/wallet as well as i don't think this can increase the block size or make transaction faster.

[deisik]

but isn't the blockchain already decentralized?

Blockchain itself is as a permanent database that gets copied to Bitcoin network nodes, so every node should have the same copy of it. In this sense, it is as centralized as it could ever get. A decentralized blockchain would mean that this original copy gets divided into a few (or many) relatively small blockchains that are independent of each other, which means that they might contain different but still valid transactions, and, at the same time, they are still part of a larger blockchain, maybe entirely virtual...

This would essentially solve the scalability issues that Bitcoin might face in the future

Quite confusing , are you suggesting fork to speed up the transactions by not storing transaction data in all the nodes of bitcoin? Are you saying it will be waste of resources (probably storage space) if current blockchain keep increasing?

Replicating millions and billions of transactions would be a waste of network resources

Both storage space and internet bandwidth has been lot cheaper these days so this will not add much cost to run bitcoin node/wallet as well as i don't think this can increase the block size or make transaction faster

There are only around 250k transactions processed daily. If this number increases, say, 100 times, internet bandwidth will be pretty quickly suffocated and storage space consumed as well

[Pai Mei]

but how could it be implemented?

how a transaction would be propagated and validated?

[Lauda]

Blockchain itself is as a permanent database that gets copied to Bitcoin network nodes, so every node should have the same copy of it. In this sense, it is as centralized as it could ever get.

No. That is literally the definition of decentralization.

A decentralized blockchain would mean that this original copy gets divided into a few (or many) relatively small blockchains that are independent of each other, which means that they might contain different but still valid transactions, and, at the same time, they are still part of a larger blockchain, maybe entirely virtual...

This would essentially solve the scalability issues that Bitcoin might face in the future

This idea shares some similarity with 'blockchain sharding' (I recall reading something about this). However, implementing this would be highly complex and it solves nothing. I have no idea why you think that it does. A similar alternative to this are sidechains. The difference is that they are not 'part' of the larger chain (or main chain) but are connected to it (2-way-peg).

[Kprawn]

The smaller divisions of the "central" Blockchain will still needs to talk to the "central" Blockchain, so this will not save on a lot of bandwidth.

You should still have to keep a "copy" of the full chain for redundancy, if something major goes wrong and you need to "restore" the whole

thing. This will be VERY complicated to know, who will be hosting what, and where tx's will be stored and processed. 

[deisik]

Blockchain itself is as a permanent database that gets copied to Bitcoin network nodes, so every node should have the same copy of it. In this sense, it is as centralized as it could ever get.

No. That is literally the definition of decentralization

I mean there is one and only data set ("blockchain") which is valid. In this sense, the blockchain is centralized. Hope this clarifies what I meant to say

The smaller divisions of the "central" Blockchain will still needs to talk to the "central" Blockchain, so this will not save on a lot of bandwidth.

You should still have to keep a "copy" of the full chain for redundancy, if something major goes wrong and you need to "restore" the whole

thing. This will be VERY complicated to know, who will be hosting what, and where tx's will be stored and processed. 

My whole point comes down to concluding that the current paradigm of a centralized blockchain (in the sense of only one authentic data set existing on the network) massively defies scalability and leads to nowhere in the long term. I pretty much don't know how to mend matters and make Bitcoin more scalable, to be honest. I just want to let people know about this issue as well as the imminence and inevitability of it, should Bitcoin adoption increase in the future, of course...

In other words, prevention is better and easier than cure

[prabowo96]

I don't see much problem against centralized.

People can make an boycott, people can make pressure for changes and for sure they will heard us.

Well, miners nowadays rule the bitcoin and can do this, users don't have much to do.

[odolvlobo]

I mean there is one and only data set ("blockchain") which is valid. In this sense, the blockchain is centralized. Hope this clarifies what I meant to say

From what I can tell, you are proposing either separate unrelated block chains (à la altcoins) or multiple (and possibly contradictory) versions of a single block chain.

[pereira4]

It's impossible to scale on-chain anywhere relevant. It's simply physically impossible to compete against payment networks by scaling onchain, unless you want to turn bitcoin itself into a paypal 2.0 (duh). The only solution to scale is Lightning Network which delives a reasonable amount of decentralization while backed by the bitcoin blockchain. I repeat: There is no other way, scaling onchain will never get us anywhere near what we want (world domination, millions of transaction per second etc). We will need a 2nd layer, unless some alien from the future comes with a space machine and gives us a new technology that can scale onchain while having small nodes that everyone can run on their basements, which is not gonna happen.

[franky1]

OP.

"I guess it will be simply impossible to process millions (billions) of transactions daily "
but that mindset is overshadowing this:
"It is almost a given that if the Bitcoin adoption should increase multifold in the coming years"

lets emphasise..
"coming years".

just 16 years ago the largest hard drive someone could have was 4gb. and the largest portable storage was only a few megabytes.
the internet was dialup.

things have changed.
in 2009 1mb blocks were acceptable.
stats done on average internet speeds (even by companies like livestreaming, videocalling services) and by those concentrating on bitcoin have shown 8mb is ok now.
and storage is well over 2 terrabyte for average home cost PC's.

meaning we can grow upto 8x now. no issue..
even core now believe 4x bloat (bloat not capacity) is safe enough within the next month..

and as you say millions/billions over YEARS. (not hours/days) is plenty of time for the hardware and bandwidth to allow more growth.

in short.
put yourself 10-16 years in the past and while on dialup with a 4gb hard drive.... ask your younger self.
"could you see in 10-16 years that just one shoot-em-up game will require the storage space of 20x the largest hard drives available, and people wont even care/think about it and just treat it as ok/normal..
that playing others while talking to others and showing each other your game play would seem normal too. but require internet speeds of over 20x the max available"

your younger self could not imagine that..
much like you cannot imagine the future in 10-16 years time

[Velkro]

but isn't the blockchain already decentralized?

It is, author have incosistent knowledge about bitcoin blockchain.
Blockchain that media talking about is just database, bitcoin blockchain is decentralized and got huge computing power behind it (without it, its just another database).

[Gahs]

@franky1
You are saying improvements in technology would make it possible for miners to have more storage spaces, faster internet speeds to keep up with the ever increasing btc transactions.

Well, I am saying I hope technology creates highly efficient mining rigs that are much cheaper and requires less cooling than what we have now because we will always need home-miners to fill in the demand - and the number of home-miners keep dwindling

[franky1]

but isn't the blockchain already decentralized?

It is, author have incosistent knowledge about bitcoin blockchain.
Blockchain that media talking about is just database, bitcoin blockchain is decentralized and got huge computing power behind it (without it, its just another database).

the blockchain is decentralized. but i think its not diverse enough.
its all by majority handled by one codebase.

i can kind of see what the OP is getting at. but at the same time he is then using that lack of diversity and also fake doomsday rhetoric of bloat worries. to then try advertise the same thing that the banking sector are planning (sidechains on their hyperledger coded by the same guys that are pushing for bitcoin to move to sidechains too)

[franky1]

@franky1
You are saying improvements in technology would make it possible for miners to have more storage spaces, faster internet speeds to keep up with the ever increasing btc transactions.

Well, I am saying I hope technology creates highly efficient mining rigs that are much cheaper and requires less cooling than what we have now because we will always need home-miners to fill in the demand - and the number of home-miners keep dwindling

compare a
4GPU miner of 2012
to a
single ASIC of 2016

2016 asic is:
CHEAPER,
more powerful
more efficient
less heat intensive
less electric wasted

and that will continue. each new generation of asic will be more efficient than the previous.

[deisik]

OP.

"I guess it will be simply impossible to process millions (billions) of transactions daily "
but that mindset is overshadowing this:
"It is almost a given that if the Bitcoin adoption should increase multifold in the coming years"

lets emphasise..
"coming years".

just 16 years ago the largest hard drive someone could have was 4gb. and the largest portable storage was only a few megabytes.
the internet was dialup

Why aren't you telling that the processor frequency has not been increasing for almost a decade already?

The trees don't grow to the sky. There is a limit to everything (save for stupidity, of course), but in this very case it doesn't actually matter, since bitcoin user base can expand exponentially (simply because it is tiny right now) while the performance of network and the capacity of storage devices can't. Moreover, increasing the number of transactions two times may cause the network load to get increased greater than that (non-linear dependence)

OP.

"I guess it will be simply impossible to process millions (billions) of transactions daily "
but that mindset is overshadowing this:
"It is almost a given that if the Bitcoin adoption should increase multifold in the coming years"

You obviously fail to differentiate between the subjunctive and indicative mood

I repeat: There is no other way, scaling onchain will never get us anywhere near what we want (world domination, millions of transaction per second etc). We will need a 2nd layer, unless some alien from the future comes with a space machine and gives us a new technology that can scale onchain while having small nodes that everyone can run on their basements, which is not gonna happen.

That's the point I was trying to make

[franky1]

im not sure why your talking about CPU frequency.
bitcoin moved passed that 'CPU limit' in 2011. it moved to GPU.
bitcoin moved passed that 'GPU limit' in 2012. it moved to FPGA.
bitcoin moved passed that 'FPGA limit' in 2013. it moved to ASIC.

we are not stuck in 2011 crying about the limits of CPU frequencies

........translating deisiks comments:
bitcoin is like a bonsai tree that wont cope with a invasion of leafcutter ants because it has a physical 1-2foot limit that it cant get passed.....
we need to plant a forest of many individual and different looking bonsai tree's and instead of everyone maintaining the (merkle) tree independently. they instead grow their own tree and then manually transfer leaf cutter ants between bonsai's using many different tools.....

a single bonsai may only grow 2 foot.
you dont simply cry that a bonsai has limits.
you dont cry that a bonsai takes 30 years to grow 2 foot and has limited foliage
you dont cry that it needs a forest of bonsai to cope with leafcutter ants.

instead you would plant a redwood tree that can grow 300 foot tall and has healthier and extra foliage. where the ants have room to do their
job uninhibited and without needing lots of maintenance to allow the ants to move about.

and laugh at other people for planting fields of bonsai, trying to get one ant to jump from bonsai to bonsai

[Velkro]

the blockchain is decentralized. but i think its not diverse enough.
its all by majority handled by one codebase.

Its enough as it is, because if bitcoin would NEED more decentralization, people would setup more nodes in almost instant.
There is no one codebase, there are many implementation of bitcoin protocol in diffirent languages of programming.

So stay calm

[deisik]

im not sure why your talking about CPU frequency.
bitcoin moved passed that 'CPU limit' in 2011. it moved to GPU.
bitcoin moved passed that 'GPU limit' in 2012. it moved to FPGA.
bitcoin moved passed that 'FPGA limit' in 2013. it moved to ASIC.

we are not stuck in 2011 crying about the limits of CPU frequencies

Oh, really? So wtf are you talking about the hard drive capacities as back as 16 years ago?

And by the way, you are flat-out wrong about that too (but that's not surprising). 16 years ago most drives came in 40Gb capacities. I well remember those days when IBM started selling their Deskstar 75GXP hard drives with glass platters and up to 75Gb in storage space, made in Hungary and exceptionally prone to failures. We called them Magyar woodpeckers since their abbreviation, DTLA, was consonant to woodpecker in Russian, "dyatel", lol. I had a few such 40Gb disks in early 2000s that quickly failed. 4Gb disks were common in 1996-1997, if I'm not mistaken

the blockchain is decentralized. but i think its not diverse enough.
its all by majority handled by one codebase.

Its enough as it is, because if bitcoin would NEED more decentralization, people would setup more nodes in almost instant.
There is no one codebase, there are many implementation of bitcoin protocol in diffirent languages of programming.

There is only one data set of transactions which is authentic at any given moment. That seems to be the highest level of "centralization" possible