transaction history and storage requirement

[smokeydog]

From what I am reading, what is stored on the individual computing nodes is a history of hashed transactions and stuff.   At some point in the past a miner received a coin as payment and a block starts ( a linked list, some structure of some kind) and grows keeping track of transactions.

1)  Does this mean that all transactions since startup are still in the system?

2)  Will they all stay there for the next 25, 50, 100 ...... years?

This would imply that if we are at 100 gig now it will get huge.   Somehow I have a feeling that I must have this picture wrong.

[1714936697]

1714936697

[achow101]

From what I am reading, what is stored on the individual computing nodes is a history of hashed transactions and stuff.   

No, not the hashed transactions, the full transactions. And the block headers for the block that a transaction is in.

At some point in the past a miner received a coin as payment and a block starts ( a linked list, some structure of some kind) and grows keeping track of transactions.

No, that is not how the blockchain started. The first block (known as the genesis block) was created by satoshi and hard coded it into the software (and it still is hard coded). You cannot receive something as payment if it does not yet exist; coins only exist because blocks exist. The linked list known as the blockchain is built off of the genesis block.

1)  Does this mean that all transactions since startup are still in the system?

Yes.

2)  Will they all stay there for the next 25, 50, 100 ...... years?

Yes. They have to.

[smokeydog]

Thanks, that helps.  I was wondering how the boot up kicked things off.  Lots to learn. 

Without this forum I have no idea where or how I would find answers.

[DannyHamilton]

From what I am reading, what is stored on the individual computing nodes is a history of hashed transactions and stuff.   At some point in the past a miner received a coin as payment and a block starts ( a linked list, some structure of some kind) and grows keeping track of transactions.

1)  Does this mean that all transactions since startup are still in the system?

2)  Will they all stay there for the next 25, 50, 100 ...... years?

This would imply that if we are at 100 gig now it will get huge.   Somehow I have a feeling that I must have this picture wrong.

New blocks are created on average every 10 minutes.  Blocks are currently limited to 4 megabytes in size.

There are 1440 minutes in a day, and approximately 365.25 days in a year.  If the list grows by 4 megabytes every 10 minutes, that means that:

In 10 years, the list will grow by:
10 years * 365.25 days per year * 1440 minutes per day / 10 minutes per block * 4 megabytes per block =
2,103,840 megabytes = 2.1 terabytes

In 100 years, the list will grow by:
100 years * 365.25 days per year * 1440 minutes per day / 10 minutes per block * 4 megabytes per block =
21,038,400 megabytes = 21 terabytes

According to Overstock.com it is currently possible to purchase 2 TB of storage for only $82:



This means that today, you could store 100 years of Bitcoin activity for less than $1000.  Would you agree that computer storage continues to get larger and cheaper over time?  How cheap and convenient do you think it will be to store 21 TB of data a century from now?

Future generations will have access to technologies that we haven't even thought of yet.  Imagine trying to understand today's technology in 1917.  Storage of the Bitcoin blockchain won't be a problem for a VERY long time.  I expect that a replacement for bitcoin will come along sometime in the next 1000 years.  There aren't many currencies that last that long.

[smokeydog]

I asked because I see this as just a beginning.  At this time a person really can't get by using bitcoin but, if it took hold and I and everyone else could start making purchases from Amazon and a lot of other vendor, the transaction volume could go up by a huge amount.

True that today, we can build a 10 terabyte RAID storage server for very little and in just 20 years that could go to 10,000 terrabyes for the same cost.  

Thanks for your input.