torba (OP)
Member
 Offline
Activity: 100
Merit: 10
|
 |
June 19, 2013, 12:52:06 AM |
|
Imagine in 10-50 years, when there are beyond billions of transactions monthly, the amount of resources a bitcoin blockchain takes up will be so out of control that only large data centers can support it. And whoever has enough money and resources to be able to service the entire blockchain has in essence centralized a decent chunk of bitcoin, and I'm assuming that there would only be at the most 10 block chains in existent if it's that out of control. It's pretty likely bitcoin will grow faster than moore's law.
So how will this impending centralization be stopped?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In order to achieve higher forum ranks, you need both activity points and merit points.
|
|
|
Advertised sites are not endorsed by the Bitcoin Forum. They may be unsafe, untrustworthy, or illegal in your jurisdiction.
|
|
|
maaku
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 905
Merit: 1011
|
|
June 19, 2013, 01:10:30 AM |
|
This has been extensively discussed on the forum and elsewhere. Use the search box.
|
I'm an independent developer working on bitcoin-core, making my living off community donations. If you like my work, please consider donating yourself: 13snZ4ZyCzaL7358SmgvHGC9AxskqumNxP |
|
|
Anon136
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1722
Merit: 1217
|
|
June 19, 2013, 01:10:42 AM |
|
Imagine in 10-50 years, when there are beyond billions of transactions monthly, the amount of resources a bitcoin blockchain takes up will be so out of control that only large data centers can support it. And whoever has enough money and resources to be able to service the entire blockchain has in essence centralized a decent chunk of bitcoin, and I'm assuming that there would only be at the most 10 block chains in existent if it's that out of control. It's pretty likely bitcoin will grow faster than moore's law.
So how will this impending centralization be stopped?
well the devs have been pretty clear that they dont have any interest in stopping this. the idea i think is that by the time it became that centralized it would be so mainstream that we would already be past the point where governments had any hope of shutting it down, even if it was centralized. many of us though would prefer that they not raise the max block size and off chain transactions could pick up the slack. we believe the market would invent clever decentralized(ish) mechanisms to deal with this problem if there were a market for it. One idea is bitcoin denominated chaum tokens maintained by a network of ot federated chaum banks. these chaum banks would be more centralized than bitcoin in its current state but much more decentralized than what you were talking about in your post, and most likely highly adaptive. if the government could locate and take out 1 chaum bank operator more would spring up to take his place instantly. one idea i like is using multisgnature transactions to create a risk fund that would allow you to create trust with a bank than could handle off chain transactions for you. this way you could use on chain transactions for large transactions, which would be good since you wouldnt want to be forced to risk a huge amount of capital to make off chain transactions, and you could use off chain transactions for smaller transactions, which would be good because you wouldnt have to risk a lot for small transactions. |
Rep Thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=381041If one can not confer upon another a right which he does not himself first possess, by what means does the state derive the right to engage in behaviors from which the public is prohibited? |
|
|
torba (OP)
Member
Offline
Activity: 100
Merit: 10
|
|
June 19, 2013, 01:23:13 AM |
|
Imagine in 10-50 years, when there are beyond billions of transactions monthly, the amount of resources a bitcoin blockchain takes up will be so out of control that only large data centers can support it. And whoever has enough money and resources to be able to service the entire blockchain has in essence centralized a decent chunk of bitcoin, and I'm assuming that there would only be at the most 10 block chains in existent if it's that out of control. It's pretty likely bitcoin will grow faster than moore's law.
So how will this impending centralization be stopped?
well the devs have been pretty clear that they dont have any interest in stopping this. the idea i think is that by the time it became that centralized it would be so mainstream that we would already be past the point where governments had any hope of shutting it down, even if it was centralized. many of us though would prefer that they not raise the max block size and off chain transactions could pick up the slack. we believe the market would invent clever decentralized(ish) mechanisms to deal with this problem if there were a market for it. One idea is bitcoin denominated chaum tokens maintained by a network of ot federated chaum banks. these chaum banks would be more centralized than bitcoin in its current state but much more decentralized than what you were talking about in your post, and most likely highly adaptive. if the government could locate and take out 1 chaum bank operator more would spring up to take his place instantly. one idea i like is using multisgnature transactions to create a risk fund that would allow you to create trust with a bank than could handle off chain transactions for you. this way you could use on chain transactions for large transactions, which would be good since you wouldnt want to be forced to risk a huge amount of capital to make off chain transactions, and you could use off chain transactions for smaller transactions, which would be good because you wouldnt have to risk a lot for small transactions. The chaum bank idea will essentially create a competitive system, and banks who cannot win over people will simply die off. There would be a lot of ignorance and people would just ignore and "limit" until it creates a catastrophic effect. |
|
|
|
|
|
bluemeanie1
|
|
June 20, 2013, 04:23:39 PM |
|
Imagine in 10-50 years, when there are beyond billions of transactions monthly, the amount of resources a bitcoin blockchain takes up will be so out of control that only large data centers can support it. And whoever has enough money and resources to be able to service the entire blockchain has in essence centralized a decent chunk of bitcoin, and I'm assuming that there would only be at the most 10 block chains in existent if it's that out of control. It's pretty likely bitcoin will grow faster than moore's law.
So how will this impending centralization be stopped?
and technologies like color coins will multiply the number of transactions exponentially. |
|
|
|
hashman
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1264
Merit: 1008
|
|
June 20, 2013, 06:48:00 PM |
|
Imagine in 10-50 years, when there are beyond billions of transactions monthly, the amount of resources a bitcoin blockchain takes up will be so out of control that only large data centers can support it. And whoever has enough money and resources to be able to service the entire blockchain has in essence centralized a decent chunk of bitcoin, and I'm assuming that there would only be at the most 10 block chains in existent if it's that out of control. It's pretty likely bitcoin will grow faster than moore's law.
So how will this impending centralization be stopped?
Off-chain transactions. Smart Checkpointing. Higher TX fees. |
|
|
|
|
|
bluemeanie1
|
|
June 20, 2013, 08:36:29 PM |
|
Imagine in 10-50 years, when there are beyond billions of transactions monthly, the amount of resources a bitcoin blockchain takes up will be so out of control that only large data centers can support it. And whoever has enough money and resources to be able to service the entire blockchain has in essence centralized a decent chunk of bitcoin, and I'm assuming that there would only be at the most 10 block chains in existent if it's that out of control. It's pretty likely bitcoin will grow faster than moore's law.
So how will this impending centralization be stopped?
Off-chain transactions. Smart Checkpointing. Higher TX fees. Peer to peer Decentralized Low or zero transaction fees Isnt that the advertised advantages of Bitcoin? |
|
|
|
|
BTCLuke
|
|
June 21, 2013, 09:00:59 AM |
|
What I want to know is why is there no way to chop off the more-than-a-year-old blocks from the blockchain and just have every download the blocks from the last 365 days or something?
|
Luke Parker
Bank Abolitionist
|
|
|
farlack
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1311
Merit: 1000
|
|
June 21, 2013, 09:04:21 AM |
|
Loading the blockchain will probably be the best bet vs downloading if its possible.
|
|
|
|
|
symaxian
Newbie
Offline
Activity: 26
Merit: 0
|
|
June 21, 2013, 03:31:07 PM |
|
Does the client still include a hardcoded hash of block number X or so?
Could we keep increasing X so that only the blocks from the previous year or two need to be verified?
|
|
|
|
|
|
mustyoshi
|
|
June 21, 2013, 03:55:26 PM |
|
What I want to know is why is there no way to chop off the more-than-a-year-old blocks from the blockchain and just have every download the blocks from the last 365 days or something?
Because what if somebody spends an output from two years ago? You wouldn't be able to confirm that transaction because you don't have that block. |
|
|
|
|
|
BTCLuke
|
|
June 21, 2013, 07:15:11 PM |
|
What I want to know is why is there no way to chop off the more-than-a-year-old blocks from the blockchain and just have every download the blocks from the last 365 days or something?
Because what if somebody spends an output from two years ago? You wouldn't be able to confirm that transaction because you don't have that block. So there's no way to tier the blockchain storage then, say, only Miners have to download 2-year old blocks? |
Luke Parker
Bank Abolitionist
|
|
|
|
mustyoshi
|
|
June 22, 2013, 02:30:05 AM |
|
What I want to know is why is there no way to chop off the more-than-a-year-old blocks from the blockchain and just have every download the blocks from the last 365 days or something?
Because what if somebody spends an output from two years ago? You wouldn't be able to confirm that transaction because you don't have that block. So there's no way to tier the blockchain storage then, say, only Miners have to download 2-year old blocks? Well technically all you need to confirm transactions are the unspent outputs (since those are what are used as inputs) iirc, the total size of those are under 200MB right now? But in order to get those you'd have to process the entire blockchain, OR there needs to be a change to the inter-node protocol to allow those to be queried. |
|
|
|
|
solex
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1078
Merit: 1002
100 satoshis -> ISO code
|
|
June 22, 2013, 02:43:50 AM |
|
The OP is invited to donate to a project by someone who is actually working on the software to massively reduce the problem of a growing blockchain: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=204283.0 |
|
|
|
flipperfish
Sr. Member
Offline
Activity: 350
Merit: 251
Dolphie Selfie
|
|
June 22, 2013, 08:36:13 PM |
|
This proposal indeed solves the problem of having to store a huge blockchain with years and years of old transactions nobody cares about. But there's a catch: To bootstrap a new client in a trustless way, it has to process the whole blockchain. So the whole blockchain has to be stored somewhere (maybe at some big blockchain-provider's data-center). Once the client knows, that it is on the right chain, the blockchain will not be needed anymore. If the client trusts some other entity (or multiple entities) to tell him which chain is the right one, the blockheaders (around 4,5MB / year) are enough. |
|
|
|
|
|
