Blockchain size

[Vigme86]

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.

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[franky1]

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.

firstly segwit does not actually offer 4mb true open utility. thats the fake promise of a 2015 scaling debate

secondly if your thinking of keeping the same computer for 10 years. then i feel sorry for your computer in regards to future other software from microsoft, apple and any other software available (unrelated to bitcoin) that wont work well on a computer thats over 10 years.(most people upgrade their pc's every 4-6 years on average

thirdly having millions of people running a full node would actually cause more of a bottleneck than having ~10k-100k used by merchants that NEED to monitor funds of thousands of people paying them each day. rather than home users that may only get paid once a month.

those only getting paid once a month and only wanting to use bitcoin just to buy groceries to be delivered next day, can just use spv wallets. not everyone needs to be a full node and monitor ~2000 tx every 10 minutes if they are only personally involved in 1 tx a day/week

if you are a business NEEDING to be monitoring more than just a couple addresses. then you probably for other business purposes have your computers on a 4 year tax deductibles set-up where you replace equipment. and you probably hav a business internet plan. rather than a home user plan

..
lastly LN is a separate network to be used for multiple coins. meaning it will require once established properly. masternodes that monitor multiple chains. thus making LN hardware requirements to be a "full node"(factory/hub/watchtower) compared to just using bitcoin and only using a bitcoin node to make transaction on the bitcoin network.
or you can just use a cellphone app and not be a full node like 99% of most people

[darosior]

with Segwit transactions single block size will rise up to 4 Mb.

It's wrong, in fact Segwit introduces a new notion for block size called "weight" and which is limited to 4MB (Link to the code). To quote the BIP141 :

Blocks are currently limited to 1,000,000 bytes (1MB) total size. We change this restriction as follows:

Block weight is defined as Base size * 3 + Total size. (rationale[3])

Base size is the block size in bytes with the original transaction serialization without any witness-related data, as seen by a non-upgraded node.

Total size is the block size in bytes with transactions serialized as described in BIP144, including base data and witness data.

The new rule is block weight ≤ 4,000,000.

In practice, this increases bloc size to somewhere between 1MB and 2MB, depending on Segwit use. In theory a block can be created with a weight of ~4MB.

If you want to see Lightning Network developped in the incoming years, you'd probably accept Segwit which resolved the transaction malleability problem thus enabling Lightning Network.

[franky1]

with Segwit transactions single block size will rise up to 4 Mb.

It's wrong, in fact Segwit introduces a new notion for block size called "weight" and which is limited to 4MB (Link to the code). To quote the bip-0141 :

Blocks are currently limited to 1,000,000 bytes (1MB) total size. We change this restriction as follows:

Block weight is defined as Base size * 3 + Total size. (rationale[3])

Base size is the block size in bytes with the original transaction serialization without any witness-related data, as seen by a non-upgraded node.

Total size is the block size in bytes with transactions serialized as described in BIP144, including base data and witness data.

The new rule is block weight ≤ 4,000,000.

In practice, this increases bloc size to ~1.4MB

If you want to see Lightning Network developped in the incoming years, you'd probably accept Segwit which resolved the transaction malleability problem thus enabling Lightning Network.

the weight is 4mb. correct. but the code is actually 4mb / WITNESS_SCALE_FACTOR(4) to keep the now outdated 1mb existing and limiting real utility. but a bit more hidden so they can pretend and flip flop social drama the 1mb's existance or non existance depending on what agenda/conversation they have.

but yes even with 4mb weight. due the to reliance of the still existing 1mb limitation. tx capacity and bytes used is expected to be around 1.2mb-2.1mb realistic utility. even in a situation of everyone using segwit(not gonna happen).. so 4mb is not really a true 4mb limit.
(to much wishy washy code)

[Vigme86]

Hi all,

....

firstly segwit does not actually offer 4mb true open utility. thats the fake promise of a 2015 scaling debate

secondly if your thinking of keeping the same computer for 10 years. then i feel sorry for your computer in regards to future other software from microsoft, apple and any other software available (unrelated to bitcoin) that wont work well on a computer thats over 10 years.(most people upgrade their pc's every 4-6 years on average

thirdly having millions of people running a full node would actually cause more of a bottleneck than having ~10k-100k used by merchants that NEED to monitor funds of thousands of people paying them each day. rather than home users that may only get paid once a month.

those only getting paid once a month and only wanting to use bitcoin just to buy groceries to be delivered next day, can just use spv wallets. not everyone needs to be a full node and monitor ~2000 tx every 10 minutes if they are only personally involved in 1 tx a day/week

if you are a business NEEDING to be monitoring more than just a couple addresses. then you probably for other business purposes have your computers on a 4 year tax deductibles set-up where you replace equipment. and you probably hav a business internet plan. rather than a home user plan

..
lastly LN is a separate network to be used for multiple coins. meaning it will require once established properly. masternodes that monitor multiple chains. thus making LN hardware requirements to be a "full node"(factory/hub/watchtower) compared to just using bitcoin and only using a bitcoin node to make transaction on the bitcoin network

First  of all, thanks for your reply, but some of your answers I simply do not understand quite a lot.

Firstly: I'm not a technician, 4 MB for single block will never be reached ? I believe you, anyway it seems to me you're turning around the point,
that is in the next years blockchain will increase way more than 50 GB/year, size will be around 1-2 TB and common users will simply cease to run full nodes.

Furthermore biggest block ever mined right now is above 2 MB, so where is the limit ?
EDIT: You've already answered at this in a previous reply, anyway there have been a 2.26 MB, hence 2.1 MB is not the limit

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/00000000000000000021868c2cefc52a480d173c849412fe81c4e5ab806f94ab


Secondly: It's not about pc upgrade but hard-disk size increase rate. It seems you're confident in ten years we'll have 16 TB hard-disk as standard, I'm not.

Thirdly: I simply do not understand this point, it seems quite in contradiction with a peer to peer electronic cash system.
You're saying common users (i.e. people which are not using bitcoin for transactions on a daily basis) should not run a full-node, while
vast majority of bitcoiners on the internet are saying exactly the opposite, like for instance aantonop here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX0Yrv-6jVs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX0Yrv-6jVs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX0Yrv-6jVs

Why should million full nodes will cause a bottleneck ?

Lastly: I do not understand this point, I'm trying to read it again later.

[DooMAD]

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.

It's something that the community spent a long time fighting about.  As others have stated, we aren't actually using the full 4MB.  Plus, the size of SegWit blocks are actually pretty reasonable considering that some of the earliest proposals about raising the blocksize were suggesting up-to-20MB blocks.
 

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?

Since LN relies on being able to both open and settle channels on-chain, blocks can't be too small.  Otherwise it could potentially cause issues with timelocks expiring if someone is spamming the blockchain.  The increase SegWit provides was deemed a fair compromise.

Thirdly: I simply do not understand this point, it seems quite in contradiction with a peer to peer electronic cash system.
You're saying common users (i.e. people which are not using bitcoin for transactions on a daily basis) should not run a full-node, while
vast majority of bitcoiners on the internet are saying exactly the opposite, like for instance aantonop here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX0Yrv-6jVs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX0Yrv-6jVs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX0Yrv-6jVs

Why should million full nodes will cause a bottleneck ?

Lastly: I do not understand this point, I'm trying to read it again later.

Franky1 is a renowned troll and LN detractor.  He despises SegWit and Lightning, so he occasionally makes shit up and hopes people believe it.

[franky1]

firstly i never said 2.1mb was a limit. i said 2.1 was a more realistic utility
EG i also said 1.2mb but that does not mean minimum limit. is just the expectant range of average.. obviously blocks can be less and more. but do not expect blocks being 4mb filled
expect it more around the 1.2mb-2.1mb area
if howevr they removed a wishy washy bit of code called witness scale factor. then more transactions can be utilitised meaning more transactions, better utility and yes actually getting full use of the 4mb weight.

....

the bit about millions of home users running full nodes on outdated pc's and slower internet causing bottlenecks vs just 10k-100k running full nodes using business lines and regularly updated hardware

imagine it took you 2-14 seconds to ask-receive-validate-relay a block
imagine your a node with 8 connections (ok for home use internet speeds)
node connects to 8 users. and those 8  connect to 8 and so on

8*8*8*8
in 8 second min 56 second max. 4096 nodes have the data

8*8*8*8*8
in 10 second min 70 second max. 32768 nodes have the data

8*8*8*8*8*8
in 12 second min 84 second max. 262144 nodes have the data

8*8*8*8*8*8*8
in 14 second min 94 second max. 2097152 nodes have the data

as you can see it can take upto 1minute and 34 seconds before 2millions people have the data
where as:
imagine where its more for those with 'unlimited fibre' plans and people that upgrade their computer often(4 year as oppose to 10 years)
imagine it took you 2-4 seconds to ask-receive-validate-relay a block

64*64
in 4 second min 8 second max. 4096 nodes have the data

64*64*64
in 6 second min 12 second max. 262144 nodes have the data

as you can see.. home users would take 12-84 seconds to get data to over 200k nodes
those with fibre and more modern updated pcs would take 6-12 seconds to get data to over 200k nodes

...
and to address the personal attack from doomad.
less important, as his noise is usually just insults..
 he is a guy that loves the idea of having funds locked up and is promoting other networks. he loves telling people if they are not happy with the plan then just go away....(facepalm)
 
so he truly hates it when people have an opinion that bitcoin utility, scaling and growth should remain on bitcoin. instead his mindset swaying users to give up using bitcoin and transact in other networks. as those other networks are not blockchained, not limited to bitcoin only coin utility.

in short not sorting out bitcoins network issues and swaying people off network. wont really help people to want to use bitcoin or return to the network.. instead they will just prefer to swap to altcoins within LN and then use other coins network...

much like 19th century banking that vaults up gold makes people play with paper promissory notes and when they withdraw they think gold is too heavy so they withdraw silver coins instead... leaving gold(bitcoin) for those that managed to make going back to bitcoin a hassle via bloated blockchain, bottlenecks, high fee's and low txcount

but dont mind doomad. he does not realise this is a discussion forum. so hates it when people discuss things that are not positive for his group of friends.
kissing ass and being 100% loyal and hide issues under the rug is what he prefers.. it really causes him to get angry when people are more open and honest to be more critical thinking and looking for real solutions and just speaking out when things are not as they seem/promoted

[franky1]

as for that block

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/00000000000000000021868c2cefc52a480d173c849412fe81c4e5ab806f94ab

2.2mb ... but only 230 transactions included..
that there is known as a bloated block as its wasting alot of tx count on heavy transactions..

a very worse case scenario is where a block can be bloated with just 5tx... yep
if you cared about bitcoin utility on the bitcoin network. i/you should not be proud of a block using 2.2mb for just 230 or 5tx.. thats the opposite of scaling bitcoin for better utility.

what you should be seeking is a case where the old notion of bitcoin allowing upto 7tx/s (4200tx a block) having on average more than 4200tx.. that then would be a time to celebrate a step forward in bitcoin utility..
or more long term more than 600k tx a day threshold being passed.

no one should be proud of a 2.2mb block of only 230tx

[Herbert2020]

as for that block

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/00000000000000000021868c2cefc52a480d173c849412fe81c4e5ab806f94ab

2.2mb ... but only 230 transactions included..
that there is known as a bloated block as its wasting alot of tx count on heavy transactions..

a very worse case scenario is where a block can be bloated with just 5tx... yep
if you cared about bitcoin utility on the bitcoin network. i/you should not be proud of a block using 2.2mb for just 230 or 5tx.. thats the opposite of scaling bitcoin for better utility.

what you should be seeking is a case where the old notion of bitcoin allowing upto 7tx/s (4200tx a block) having on average more than 4200tx.. that then would be a time to celebrate a step forward in bitcoin utility..
or more long term more than 600k tx a day threshold being passed.

no one should be proud of a 2.2mb block of only 230tx

so what are you trying to suggest here?

the number of transactions in that block is 230 because people (services) have been batching transactions and reusing addresses which has led to creating bigger transactions hence taking up bigger space in a block hence a block being able to contain lesser number of them.

this has been the case from day 1 and will be with or without SegWit or even with having a hard fork to a block size 2 MB.

[franky1]

so what are you trying to suggest here?

the number of transactions in that block is 230 because people (services) have been batching transactions and reusing addresses which has led to creating bigger transactions hence taking up bigger space in a block hence a block being able to contain lesser number of them.

this has been the case from day 1 and will be with or without SegWit or even with having a hard fork to a block size 2 MB.

what you notice is that the bloated "batch" tx's are using segwit smart contracts which batched up 200 inputs and 1 output
with a 65kb bloat per tx

if an exchange used 200 legacy addresses
in*180 + out*34 + 10
200*180 +1*34 +10=36044

so using segwit. actual hard drive bytes are 65kb.. vs legacy would have been 36kb per tx..
meaning less actual hard drive bytes would have been used by that block 230 txs.

now imagine it was legacy, and no witness scale factor and the legacy cap was 2.3mb(to keep the block the same hard drive bytes used limit as the block exampled).. more than 230 tx's would have fit in

now imagine 4mb legacy cap without the segwit witness scale factor to make the 4mb weight fully utilisable. even more transactions would have fit into a block..

it aint rocket science

[clonely]

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.

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.

[Herbert2020]

so what are you trying to suggest here?

the number of transactions in that block is 230 because people (services) have been batching transactions and reusing addresses which has led to creating bigger transactions hence taking up bigger space in a block hence a block being able to contain lesser number of them.

this has been the case from day 1 and will be with or without SegWit or even with having a hard fork to a block size 2 MB.

what you notice is that the bloated "batch" tx's are using segwit smart contracts which batched up 200 inputs and 1 output
with a 65kb bloat per tx

if an exchange used 200 legacy addresses
in*180 + out*34 + 10
200*180 +1*34 +10=36044

so using segwit. actual hard drive bytes are 65kb.. vs legacy would have been 36kb per tx..
meaning less actual hard drive bytes would have been used by that block 230 txs.

now imagine it was legacy, and no witness scale factor and the legacy cap was 2.3mb(to keep the block the same hard drive bytes used limit as the block exampled).. more than 230 tx's would have fit in

now imagine 4mb legacy cap without the segwit witness scale factor to make the 4mb weight fully utilisable. even more transactions would have fit into a block..

it aint rocket science

if this (bb7f7a0988e96f9939d0a39effc969ff5c1c18be9fe667ddde65c290dd8ae2d0) is the transaction you have in mind (which has 200 inputs) then it is not single key SegWit which you are comparing with a single key legacy transaction! it is a multi signature SegWit with 2 signatures in it (2 of 3) so each output is increased by 2 additional pubkeys (2*32 byte + 1 byte size + 4 byte op codes) which has nothing to do with SegWit!

as for scriptsig in this type of transaction it is there because they are using a workaround for using SegWit instead of using SegWit itself (workaround being nested in p2sh). if you use direct SegWit instead scriptsig would be empty !

[franky1]

Most of you are wrong, since SegWit activation, maximum block size weight limit is 4 million weight unit (not 4MB).

Actual maximum block size depends on the transaction (SegWit or non-SegWit) and how big (in byte) is the signature or/and P2SH size (if transaction use SegWit).
4MB block size is possible, but only under very specific transaction format.

thats the wishy washy code, where devs pretend they have given the community 4mb space. but the reality is expectant to be around 1.2mb-2.1mb average while witness scale factor is limiting utility below 4mb

we still have not surpassed satoshi's 7tx/s calculation (600k tx a day) and he calculated that 8 years ago

[DooMAD]

if howevr they removed a wishy washy bit of code called witness scale factor. then more transactions can be utilitised meaning more transactions, better utility and yes actually getting full use of the 4mb weight.

If you had bothered to acknowledge the point made in the first post, you might have noticed concern has been expressed about the rate at which the total size of the blockchain is growing.  Obviously you don't care, but others do.  Understand your audience.  Try just for a moment to appreciate that you are not the only user on this chain.  If users want to run code that utilises scale witness factor, they can.

[Zin-Zang]

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.

Common users aka (idiots that work for free) are given NO financial incentive to run a full node in the BTC network.
They just wasting what little money they have.

Only PoW MasterNodes like Dash or Proof of Stake Nodes receive any incentive for it's users to run a full node.

You could have just said , if Common Users never get paid, they will eventually smarten up and quit wasting their money. 


 

[franky1]

if this (bb7f7a0988e96f9939d0a39effc969ff5c1c18be9fe667ddde65c290dd8ae2d0) is the transaction you have in mind (which has 200 inputs) then it is not single key SegWit which you are comparing with a single key legacy transaction! it is a multi signature SegWit with 2 signatures in it (2 of 3) so each output is increased by 2 additional pubkeys (2*32 byte + 1 byte size + 4 byte op codes) which has nothing to do with SegWit!

as for scriptsig in this type of transaction it is there because they are using a workaround for using SegWit instead of using SegWit itself (workaround being nested in p2sh). if you use direct SegWit instead scriptsig would be empty !

not specifically that one, but there a are a few of that exact format so


the whole hype of scaling using LN is "be like VISA"
visa dont have multisig.. they just do straight peer-visa-peer. so using the peer-to peer and not the group-to peer
.. you know.. making transactions lean and simple peer to peer.
... deactivating BLOATING contracts
... deactivating transactions  that use more bytes (even 'singlekey' segwit uses more hard drive bytes than legacy does by the way)
and going back to basics of lean peer-to-peer network

now imagine it was legacy, and no witness scale factor and the legacy cap was 2.3mb(to keep the block the same hard drive bytes used limit as the block exampled).. more than 230 tx's would have fit in

If you had bothered to acknowledge the point made in the first post, you might have noticed concern has been expressed about the rate at which the total size of the blockchain is growing.  Obviously you don't care, but others do.  Understand your audience.  Try just for a moment to appreciate that you are not the only user on this chain.  If users want to run code that utilises scale witness factor, they can.

witness scalefactor does not stop spammers spamming should they wish. witness scale factor does not stop block sizes increasing. but the whole segwit+witnes scale factor does limit tx count growth and does mess with the bloat vs hard drive utility per tx count

my answer of

if this (bb7f7a0988e96f9939d0a39effc969ff5c1c18be9fe667ddde65c290dd8ae2d0) is the transaction you have in mind (which has 200 inputs) then it is not single key SegWit which you are comparing with a single key legacy transaction! it is a multi signature SegWit with 2 signatures in it (2 of 3) so each output is increased by 2 additional pubkeys (2*32 byte + 1 byte size + 4 byte op codes) which has nothing to do with SegWit!

as for scriptsig in this type of transaction it is there because they are using a workaround for using SegWit instead of using SegWit itself (workaround being nested in p2sh). if you use direct SegWit instead scriptsig would be empty !

the whole hyp of scaling is "be like VISA"
visa dont have multisig.. they just do straight peer via peer. so using the peer-to peer and not the group-to peer
.. you know.. making transactions lean and simple peer to peer.
... deactivating BLOATING contracts
... deactivating transactions  that use more bytes (even 'singlekey' segwit uses more hard drive bytes than legacy does by the way)
and going back to basics of lean peer-to-peer network

now imagine it was legacy, and no witness scale factor and the legacy cap was 2.3mb(to keep the block the same hard drive bytes used limit as the block exampled).. more than 230 tx's would have fit in

would still apply
as going back to simple peer-to-peer.. AND being leaner them 230 transactions would fit in LESS than 2.3mb... so that 2.3mb would fit more than 230tx

i know you dont like me discussing things. but this is a discussion board. the ignore button is free

[Hirokook]

i'm finding information about this technology. if you have any other . can you sharing me?

[franky1]

we still have not surpassed satoshi's 7tx/s calculation (600k tx a day) and he calculated that 8 years ago

I disagree since even developer/technical  page mention this fact. Additionally we've surpassed 7tx/s,

come on.. think realistically.. not optimistically
where has there ever been a case where 600,000 people were able to get their transaction confirmed all in one day

show me a day that the transaction count surpassed 600k, to show that bitcoin has grown to surpass the capacity to allow 600,000 people to use bitcoin a day peer-to-peer

not group-to-peer
not custodian-to-peers
but per-to-peer

[Vigme86]

@Vigme86 you totally forget that hard-drive capacity increasing over time and price/GB become lower over time.

Additionally if we're talking about scaling, storage capacity isn't biggest problem. Internet bandwidth, internet latency and RAM usage are bigger problem.
Furthermore, even with scaling solutions such as LN, you still need on-chain transaction to open and close channel.and current on-chain capacity isn't enough if Bitcoin is mass adopted (and even if all of them only use LN) .

...

Are you suggesting someday BTC will increase its block size ?
What do you mean when you're saying "mass adopted"?
In my mind mass adoption means there will be millions of full nodes running on a daily basis, am I wrong?

I'm aware capacity will increase over time, not quite sure it will be enough.

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

[DooMAD]

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.