Is the Bitcoin Block Chain too big?

[WishIStartedSooner]

You don't have to use Bitcoin-qt you can use Electrum as local wallet

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[franky1]

You don't have to use Bitcoin-qt you can use Electrum as local wallet

translation
dont own your own bitcoins use a third party service that can take the coins..

i personally would say for those people that get bitcoins as a wage and spend them on foodler.com and bitcoinstore, meaning the "consumer" class of people, then yes using third party services for weekly amounts is acceptable.

but for investors and long term savers i would say using the proper client with full blockchain and understanding the best practices of backing up and paper wallet funds long term is advantageous.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Saying electrum (or SPV client) is a third party service is misleading.
Please explain how electrum server would steal your coins.  The truth is you probably have no clue, you probable attack vector.

[balanghai]

It doesn't matter if it's really big. You just have to buy another hard drive for your dedicated wallet.

[Heutenamos]

13GB is not much to download. 100GB would be size I would reconsider using Electrum client instead.

[DannyHamilton]

You don't have to use Bitcoin-qt you can use Electrum as local wallet

translation
dont own your own bitcoins use a third party service that can take the coins..

What are you talking about?

In what way do you not own your own bitcoins with Electrum (or MultiBit)?

With both those wallets, you have exclusive control of your private keys.

If Electrum or MultiBit are "third party services", then so is Bitcoin-Qt.

[beetcoin]

it sounds like he doesn't know what electrum is, or how it works.

[Come-from-Beyond]

In what way do you not own your own bitcoins with Electrum (or MultiBit)?

With both those wallets, you have exclusive control of your private keys.

If Electrum or MultiBit are "third party services", then so is Bitcoin-Qt.

Sometimes ownership of private keys is not enough. If Electrum can fake received transactions in ur "wallet" they can cheat u. With Bitcoin-Qt u can be sure that if u see "6 confirmations" then there are indeed 6 confirmations.

[DeathAndTaxes]

In what way do you not own your own bitcoins with Electrum (or MultiBit)?

With both those wallets, you have exclusive control of your private keys.

If Electrum or MultiBit are "third party services", then so is Bitcoin-Qt.

Sometimes ownership of private keys is not enough. If Electrum can fake received transactions in ur "wallet" they can cheat u. With Bitcoin-Qt u can be sure that if u see "6 confirmations" then there are indeed 6 confirmations.

Unless the attacker isolates you from the rest of the network.

If one is paranoid they could check tx against multiple electrum server or even run their own in the cloud to ensure they are getting good data.

[bitfreak!]

I am not sure how you even came to the 1.3 Terrabytes total.

Well the growth of the blockchain seems to be following an exponential trend, and if it continues like that it wont be surprising to see it larger than 1 TB by 2017.

This is exactly why I've put so much of my effort into developing a new type of mini-blockchain scheme which doesn't require every transaction ever made to be saved forever.

[niothor]

Just for the fun I started again bitcoinqt on a laptop i haven't used in a while.
It says 31525 blocks remaining , I wonder how long it will take.

[drawingthesun]

I am not sure how you even came to the 1.3 Terrabytes total.

Well the growth of the blockchain seems to be following an exponential trend, and if it continues like that it wont be surprising to see it larger than 1 TB by 2017.

This is exactly why I've put so much of my effort into developing a new type of mini-blockchain scheme which doesn't require every transaction ever made to be saved forever.

With a max of 1mb per block the blockchain should not be able to grow faster than 52GB/year.

Although that is still very large.

[bitfreak!]

With a max of 1mb per block the blockchain should not be able to grow faster than 52GB/year.

That is true, but the max block size will eventually need to be increased if bitcoin is to support the growing level of transaction rates. So there are two options 1) cap the transaction rate and thus cap the blockchain growth rate or 2) increase the max block size and deal with an exponential growth in blockchain size. Neither option is ideal, the best way is to design the blockchain in such a way that it is dynamic and old blocks can be easily discarded from the chain but at the same time the account balances remain verifiable.

[drawingthesun]

With a max of 1mb per block the blockchain should not be able to grow faster than 52GB/year.

That is true, but the max block size will eventually need to be increased if bitcoin is support the growing level of transaction rates. So there are two options 1) cap the transaction rate and thus cap the blockchain growth rate or 2) increase the max block size and deal with an exponential growth in blockchain size. Neither option is ideal, the best way is to design the blockchain in such a way that it is dynamic and old blocks can be easily discarded from the chain but at the same time the account balances remain verifiable.

I completely agree with you.

1) make the chain dynamic like you say, but also...

2) we need to be able to distribute nodes. Even if we get the size down the real time transaction amount may become very large (Imagine several thousand tx/sec). In this case a distributed node where you connect into a node cluster depending on your resources. So an average computer that wants to participate can connect to a swarm of 10,000 other similar computers and they all become one node. In this manner us little guys can still verify blocks even they are incomming fast.

3) also I think we need to move away from giant blocks and to smaller faster blocks. The block reward can be split too (Although in the long run this does not matter as tx fees will pay for the network). So imagine that hundreds of 500kb blocks confirm every minute, and as those blocks get old (past depth:1,000) they start to get compressed and merged and eventually deleted (back to your dynamic blockchain idea)

[bitfreak!]

I like the idea of super nodes or "clusters", but aren't mining pools essentially the same thing? And I agree with your last point about fast blocks but the problem is that if you make the block rate too fast it can cause a large number of orphaned blocks and other problems. Anything less than 1 minute seems to be a bit too fast imo, but I think the 10 minute block rate of bitcoin is a bit too slow. I think there is a natural balance between too fast and too slow, something close to 2 minutes is optimal imo.

[gollum]

With a max of 1mb per block the blockchain should not be able to grow faster than 52GB/year.

That is true, but the max block size will eventually need to be increased if bitcoin is support the growing level of transaction rates. So there are two options 1) cap the transaction rate and thus cap the blockchain growth rate or 2) increase the max block size and deal with an exponential growth in blockchain size. Neither option is ideal, the best way is to design the blockchain in such a way that it is dynamic and old blocks can be easily discarded from the chain but at the same time the account balances remain verifiable.

I completely agree with you.

1) make the chain dynamic like you say, but also...

2) we need to be able to distribute nodes. Even if we get the size down the real time transaction amount may become very large (Imagine several thousand tx/sec). In this case a distributed node where you connect into a node cluster depending on your resources. So an average computer that wants to participate can connect to a swarm of 10,000 other similar computers and they all become one node. In this manner us little guys can still verify blocks even they are incomming fast.

3) also I think we need to move away from giant blocks and to smaller faster blocks. The block reward can be split too (Although in the long run this does not matter as tx fees will pay for the network). So imagine that hundreds of 500kb blocks confirm every minute, and as those blocks get old (past depth:1,000) they start to get compressed and merged and eventually deleted (back to your dynamic blockchain idea)

I agree with you, several methods need to be implemented to deal with the blockchain monster.
The current method where all client and miners download all the blockchain is not sustainable.

[joeyjoe]

Most people use laptops with SSD, and cant afford to have a blockchain size of 40 GB or bigger.. that consumes 1/3 or 1/6 of their SSD size.
If we want a truly decentralized network, nobody should be excluded. The solution is therefore to make the blockchain dynamic and small instead of one gigantic mirror on every HDD in the network.

That's a very bold claim, that most people use laptops with SSD. I for one do not know any of them.
I agree that the thing to do is to make a lightweight version of the blockchain that would contain only current spendable transaction outputs. But anyone willing to host the full blockchain should have the means to do so.

I have a SSD in both my laptops, my brother has SSD's in his laptop, My boss uses SSD's in every laptop issued by our company. SSD's are everywhere.

[drawingthesun]

Most people use laptops with SSD, and cant afford to have a blockchain size of 40 GB or bigger.. that consumes 1/3 or 1/6 of their SSD size.
If we want a truly decentralized network, nobody should be excluded. The solution is therefore to make the blockchain dynamic and small instead of one gigantic mirror on every HDD in the network.

That's a very bold claim, that most people use laptops with SSD. I for one do not know any of them.
I agree that the thing to do is to make a lightweight version of the blockchain that would contain only current spendable transaction outputs. But anyone willing to host the full blockchain should have the means to do so.

I have a SSD in both my laptops, my brother has SSD's in his laptop, My boss uses SSD's in every laptop issued by our company. SSD's are everywhere.

All my friends at uni have SSD's in their laptops, my parents and girlfriends parents that have no idea about computers now have ssd's (Without us being an influence on their purchase) and even desktops are being sold with ssd as default these-days.

[DeathAndTaxes]

SSD are subject to Moore's law.  The blockchain is growing slower than Moore's law.   The "SSD issue" is not an issue.  When the blockchain is 1 TB your laptop will have a 20 TB SSD and it will only cost $159.99 (the SSD not the laptop).

[Come-from-Beyond]

SSD are subject to Moore's law.  The blockchain is growing slower than Moore's law.

Get rid of block size limit and blockchain will start growing faster than Moore's law. Mass adoption and 1 Mb limit are incompatible each to other. The best we can do is to find Equilibrium.