what are they going to do when the bitcoin chain becomes prohibitively large?

[dogechode]

The bitcoin app already takes up a hefty amount of hard drive space. What is going to happen in a few years when it gets even larger? As people have more and more cryptocoin wallets on their PCs, space could become an issue... Is there any way around this?

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[roy7]

I don't know the right terminology to use, but I believe the next major version of bitcoin has something to reduce the amount of data needed to be stored.

[seriouscoin]

The bitcoin app already takes up a hefty amount of hard drive space. What is going to happen in a few years when it gets even larger? As people have more and more cryptocoin wallets on their PCs, space could become an issue... Is there any way around this?

You assume technology stops evolving?

Because in 2005, 4 GIG of Ram was ALOT. 

[MysteryMiner]

Buy 8TB external HDD for Bitcoin data directory and be prepared for next 6 or 7 years of blockchain growth! Or buy the second-hand 8TB drive 5 years from now for couple of dollars.

[AltorXP]

Buy 8TB external HDD for Bitcoin data directory and be prepared for next 6 or 7 years of blockchain growth! Or buy the second-hand 8TB drive 5 years from now for couple of dollars.

Or use SPV wallets
Once the blockchain is too big to be hosted on a single node, it might be split, and spread so each node only hosts a fraction.

[gollum]

Buy 8TB external HDD for Bitcoin data directory and be prepared for next 6 or 7 years of blockchain growth! Or buy the second-hand 8TB drive 5 years from now for couple of dollars.

Or use SPV wallets
Once the blockchain is too big to be hosted on a single node, it might be split, and spread so each node only hosts a fraction.

Exactly, that's the only realistic long term solution.
Each node holds random parts of the blockchain, but all nodes together will have redundancy

[roy7]

Exactly, that's the only realistic long term solution.
Each node holds random parts of the blockchain, but all nodes together will have redundancy

Interesting, I should read up on that. Kinda sounds like torrent, except you don't end up downloading the whole thing.

[go4nature]

I am using multibit , it is not downloading every thing.

[dogechode]

I am using multibit , it is not downloading every thing.

Multibit is less secure though. It seems that most methods of reducing the storage requirement involve accepting a higher level of risk.

[Lethn]

The bitcoin app already takes up a hefty amount of hard drive space. What is going to happen in a few years when it gets even larger? As people have more and more cryptocoin wallets on their PCs, space could become an issue... Is there any way around this?

You assume technology stops evolving?

Because in 2005, 4 GIG of Ram was ALOT.  

This is becoming a serious problem now, rather than adapting their code programmers everywhere just shrug and expect their customers to buy high end PCs that easily cost over £800, for a lot of people it isn't realistic to do that for most things because they're on a budget. Games are a perfect example that I'm worried about because rather than just deciding on a certain number of polygons etc. to use programmers now are just vomiting effects all over the screen and expecting people to buy high end systems to cope with it, this is just sloppy coding practice and bad forethought it will also drive a lot of customers away that don't want to spend the money on these systems just to play usually one or two games on it a bit like the whole console exclusives problem.

Nevermind games, if you're going to do this to someone with a business with software they use and force them to get several hundred pounds of equipment just so they can cope with it until the next software comes out which will require another machine you're just going to get the middle finger. I think that the Bitcoin dev team are more intelligent than this but this is precisely why I support altcoins and wouldn't have taken an interest in Bitcoin if it wasn't open source, somebody will find a more efficient solution to the blockchain taking up so much space if they won't.

You might make companies like Intel and AMD happy with that kind of attitude but everybody else is going to hate it.

[12648430]

I agree this is a major problem we're going to have to solve (and that software bloat sucks!), but I'm not sure what you mean about the altcoins. There isn't any that has solved Bitcoin's scalability issues, except by having many fewer transactions to deal with, is there?

[Lethn]

Nah there isn't, but if the Bitcoin dev team don't solve it someone else might that's my point, I mean look at Litecoin, while it's not hugely revolutionary or anything somebody came out with a coin that only GPU's ( at least so far ) could mine and then there's stuff like Primecoin and Peercoin, I'm definitely grateful that the code for Bitcoin was released open source.

[bitfreak!]

I have lost count of the number of threads asking this same question. I usually don't bother answering but this time I will. The simple answer is blockchain pruning. Old spent transactions buried under enough blocks can be trimmed from the blockchain. Satoshi mentioned this as a method for reclaiming disk space in the original white paper. However, it's easier said than done now that the network is already several years old, and all the unspent "dust" transactions limit the effectiveness of blockchain pruning. I personally believe the real solution to scalability in decentralized cryptocurrency can be achieved with a system like my mini-blockchain scheme. But I wont bother explaining how it works in this thread, if you're interested in the details then read the wiki: http://bitfreak.info/mbc-wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

[dogechode]

This is becoming a serious problem now, rather than adapting their code programmers everywhere just shrug and expect their customers to buy high end PCs that easily cost over £800, for a lot of people it isn't realistic to do that for most things because they're on a budget. Games are a perfect example that I'm worried about because rather than just deciding on a certain number of polygons etc. to use programmers now are just vomiting effects all over the screen and expecting people to buy high end systems to cope with it, this is just sloppy coding practice and bad forethought it will also drive a lot of customers away that don't want to spend the money on these systems just to play usually one or two games on it a bit like the whole console exclusives problem.

Nevermind games, if you're going to do this to someone with a business with software they use and force them to get several hundred pounds of equipment just so they can cope with it until the next software comes out which will require another machine you're just going to get the middle finger. I think that the Bitcoin dev team are more intelligent than this but this is precisely why I support altcoins and wouldn't have taken an interest in Bitcoin if it wasn't open source, somebody will find a more efficient solution to the blockchain taking up so much space if they won't.

You might make companies like Intel and AMD happy with that kind of attitude but everybody else is going to hate it.

Yeah, there was a time when games were written in a relatively high-level language such as C++, but then they would go in and optimize specific sections of the code in a much lower level language (typically assembly language) to make it as efficient as possible. Nowadays the thinking is that since computers are so powerful, it's a waste of time and expertise to do that, so they just churn out sloppy code in a high level language and waste a ton of resources.  I do not like this trend either.

Also, the level of skill in the average programmer now vs 10 years ago is appalling... now just about any retard that managed to graduate college with even the most rudimentary understanding of programming can get a job.

[BADecker]

There is ONE blockchain. There might be forks. There might be disagreements over which is momentarily - right now - the correct info in the latest block. But in the end, there will only be one blockchain.

Since there is only one blockchain, the Bitcoin client could be adapted to gradually drop off all blockchain info from, say, before two years ago. Two years of proof should be enough. That is the standard in law for things like insurance and trusts, anyway.

At the same time, anyone could keep and maintain the whole thing if he wanted.

The Bitcoin client could be tweaked to have this as an option.

[Lethn]

This is becoming a serious problem now, rather than adapting their code programmers everywhere just shrug and expect their customers to buy high end PCs that easily cost over £800, for a lot of people it isn't realistic to do that for most things because they're on a budget. Games are a perfect example that I'm worried about because rather than just deciding on a certain number of polygons etc. to use programmers now are just vomiting effects all over the screen and expecting people to buy high end systems to cope with it, this is just sloppy coding practice and bad forethought it will also drive a lot of customers away that don't want to spend the money on these systems just to play usually one or two games on it a bit like the whole console exclusives problem.

Nevermind games, if you're going to do this to someone with a business with software they use and force them to get several hundred pounds of equipment just so they can cope with it until the next software comes out which will require another machine you're just going to get the middle finger. I think that the Bitcoin dev team are more intelligent than this but this is precisely why I support altcoins and wouldn't have taken an interest in Bitcoin if it wasn't open source, somebody will find a more efficient solution to the blockchain taking up so much space if they won't.

You might make companies like Intel and AMD happy with that kind of attitude but everybody else is going to hate it.

Yeah, there was a time when games were written in a relatively high-level language such as C++, but then they would go in and optimize specific sections of the code in a much lower level language (typically assembly language) to make it as efficient as possible. Nowadays the thinking is that since computers are so powerful, it's a waste of time and expertise to do that, so they just churn out sloppy code in a high level language and waste a ton of resources.  I do not like this trend either.

Also, the level of skill in the average programmer now vs 10 years ago is appalling... now just about any retard that managed to graduate college with even the most rudimentary understanding of programming can get a job.

I'm really glad I'm not the only one noticing this the thing is though, I'm not even really a programmer, but it's so easy to tell the more you poke and prod at software these days.

[medUSA]

I don't like the huge size of the blockchain,
not because of it taking too much space on my harddisk,
it's the time it takes to download it (or update it).

Storage is cheap, and it will continue to get cheaper, so it is not a problem
It's a real hassle to wait and wait to synchronise...

Time is much more valuable

[gollum]

The blockchain is a very primitive method of distributing data among many nodes.
Instead we need a distributed database.

Current numbers for the bitcoin network:
Nodes = 100,000
Blocks = 300,000

Blockchain: Each nodes keeps track of all blocks as a reference

Proposal: a distributed database, Each Node keeps track of random blocks of the blockchain
Each node should probably keep at least 0,1% of the blockchain to prevent data corruption, data loss and double spending.

[jongameson]

are u aware that they make bigger and bigger hard drives each year  

[franky1]

Buy 8TB external HDD for Bitcoin data directory and be prepared for next 6 or 7 years of blockchain growth! Or buy the second-hand 8TB drive 5 years from now for couple of dollars.

dont be silly with your bad maths.

each block =1mb so 6 blocks a hour, 24 hours a day = 144mb a day
365 days a year = 52,560mb (52gb)

thats 52GB per year, so lets multiply that by 10 years... oh look half a terrabyte not 8.. but 16 times less.

to add another point. 10 years ago people complained that a game using 1GB was epic. now COD and crises use more then 15GB. so imagine in 10 years time.

hard drive capacity use to be 100gb max ten years ago, now you can buy a 2TB HD for under £$100.

imagine what will be the norm in 10 years.