Blockchain size

[prasad87]

Hi all,

I've recently discovered something is quite concerning for me, i.e. with Segwit transactions single block size will rise up to 4 Mb.
This would lead to a blockchain increase up to ~200 GB/year, while a normal laptop does not have more than 500 GB.

Right now blockchain is already at 200 GB.
 
In ten years it seems quite unsustainable. Common users will cease to run a full node, only pros and geeks will do that,
and we'll never have millions of full nodes in that way.

If bitcoin is peer to peer electronic cash and want to be worldwide, IMHO more than mining centralization and price dumping
it's mass adoption of the peer-to-peer network that should be concerned.

If LN will have a great development in the following years, and I hope I will. what about reducing block size back to 1 MB or even lower?

I would like to have explanation and thoughts about a technician.

Thanks in advance.

4Mb is only a theoretically possible block size, we're never getting there in practice.
I own an external 2GB SSD drive. I'm not some crazy geek, this is a consumer product.
It is theoretically guaranteed to be able to contain the blockchain for another 10 years.
In 10 years 2GB SSD drives will probably cost what 128GB USB flash drives cost today.
That said, there's no reason for any pleb to actually download the entire blockchain and there's literally nothing wrong with using SPV wallets, so why would it matter. I stopped using Bitcoin Core software in 2016 because I didn't wanna melt my CPU with all the block verifications - so ordinary users are already NOT using bitcoin core, opting for SPV instead.

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[evanescence]

4Mb is only a theoretically possible block size, we're never getting there in practice.
I own an external 2GB SSD drive. I'm not some crazy geek, this is a consumer product.
It is theoretically guaranteed to be able to contain the blockchain for another 10 years.
In 10 years 2GB SSD drives will probably cost what 128GB USB flash drives cost today.
That said, there's no reason for any pleb to actually download the entire blockchain and there's literally nothing wrong with using SPV wallets, so why would it matter. I stopped using Bitcoin Core software in 2016 because I didn't wanna melt my CPU with all the block verifications - so ordinary users are already NOT using bitcoin core, opting for SPV instead.

Completely agree about the SPV alternative. To add to the topic, there is a great video by Peter Rizun who explains how it works and covers the potential downsides - part 1 and part 2.
TL;DR: In short, security on SPV is fine, there's a problem with anonymity that needs to be addressed (and he has a plan on how to improve it). But if you're so desperate to remain untraceable, then you should probably invest in a modern machine instead of a 10 year old laptop (that's my opinion, not his).

[biskitop]

Hi all,

I've recently discovered something is quite concerning for me, i.e. with Segwit transactions single block size will rise up to 4 Mb.
This would lead to a blockchain increase up to ~200 GB/year, while a normal laptop does not have more than 500 GB.

Right now blockchain is already at 200 GB.
 
In ten years it seems quite unsustainable. Common users will cease to run a full node, only pros and geeks will do that,
and we'll never have millions of full nodes in that way.

If bitcoin is peer to peer electronic cash and want to be worldwide, IMHO more than mining centralization and price dumping
it's mass adoption of the peer-to-peer network that should be concerned.

If LN will have a great development in the following years, and I hope I will. what about reducing block size back to 1 MB or even lower?

I would like to have explanation and thoughts about a technician.

Thanks in advance.

more plausible, the point is that as technology develops and the quality increases, the size will grow bigger, not smaller.

When I bought my first PC, It has only 80GB HDD. Then I bought new one and it has a 250GB. Now, I have a computer and it has a 1TB HDD.

I can give another example to you. When I was a child VCD movies were starting new. And they had a max. 700MB capacity. We are watchind 3D or 4K videos now.  And there are disc which has a great capaticy. 4K movies almost takes 30GB data. So time is relative and data is also. Data sizes are getting bigger day by day just like technology. So you shouldn't care a data size. You may look energy problem. It is so important.

[franky1]

Finally, I would like to know what is "witness scale factor", never heard about it  .
Can you please give me a hint ?

Once you've understood weight, then you can read about the scale factor, also referred to as the discount factor.  

due to the wishy washy code and the fake buzzwords.. (discount, pfft yea right)

Code:

static const unsigned int MAX_BLOCK_WEIGHT = 4000000;
static const int64_t MAX_BLOCK_SIGOPS_COST = 80000;
static const int WITNESS_SCALE_FACTOR = 4;

its 4mb block. but the witness scale factor makes legacy transactions appear as 4x the size when counted in code, thus to be treated as only being able to fit into a 1mb limit

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weight_units#Weight_for_legacy_transactions

Transactions that don't use segregated witness (segwit) are currently called legacy transactions. For these transactions, calculating the number of weight units in a transaction is as easy as putting the transaction into the format used in a P2P protocol block message, counting the number of bytes, and multiplying by four.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/bccb4d29a8080bf1ecda1fc235415a11d903a680/src/consensus/tx_verify.cpp#L167

Code:

    if (::GetSerializeSize(tx, PROTOCOL_VERSION | SERIALIZE_TRANSACTION_NO_WITNESS) * WITNESS_SCALE_FACTOR > MAX_BLOCK_WEIGHT)
return state.DoS(100, false, REJECT_INVALID, "bad-txns-oversize");

it also does stuff like fake how many actual signops legacy transactions actually perform
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/bccb4d29a8080bf1ecda1fc235415a11d903a680/src/consensus/tx_verify.cpp#L140

Code:

 int64_t nSigOps = GetLegacySigOpCount(tx) * WITNESS_SCALE_FACTOR;

so as others have said. while there is a 4mb limit. that 4mb is not fully utilisable due to the witness scale factor fudging with the count