But I never thought about bitcoin block size like this, I thought it was just about the burden of individual nodes keeping the entire blockchain. Because even I right now couldn't afford to do it. I know there is pruning but I'm not so technical. It's only less than half TB but most of us on PC are still using max 512gb disks
I know it's different in Europe maybe but that puts most of us in Asia out.
i would have thought (joking here) that asia would be ahead of the game. especially since the hard drives people in the west buy.. come from asia
im just going to use thailand as an example
if we assume a 4mb block full utility for full transaction access.. well thats 1.26TB for the next 6 years( call it 1.6tb for all 18 years back to genesis. you can get a
2tb for 1800b in thailand. which is about 6 days min wage, which should see you good until 2028
(most people update their PC every 4-6 years anyway)
even super fast unlimited internet is only like
2 days(10% of min wage monthly income) which is about standard cost around the world
..
as for pruning.. um.. no. it doesnt have the HASH ID to then interrogate other peers to ensure data integrity of UTXOset nor does it then allow other nodes to then initial block download from you. so by pruning you become an insecure 'leecher' not offering all the decentralised protocol backbone services a full node suppose to offer.
there are many idea's in the pipeline where instead of a endless blockchain from genesis. .. insteat of curent insecure and less network serving pruning.. there is idea's of a hybrid. a best of both worlds 'ball and chain' idea floating around.
imagine in the future where by nodes had code to 'milestone' the utxo set as of block 840,000(2024 halving) and ball up all the unspents as seen from the view of block 840,000. (im estimating about 5gb 'ball' of data) and give it a hash. and then mine that hash for X year(include it in block data). then at a later date when its deemed as a true 'milestone' EG 945,000(a year later) and 105,000 blocks deep. to secure the utxo hash into record
prune off the chain from below 840,000. thus there is then a 'ball' (5gb) and chain(upto 210gb) instead of the endless 'from genesis chain' people cry about.
this 'ball' would be under 5gb unspents. instead of the estimated 520gb spent and unspent chain by 2028
but by having a hash and a strong hash at that. it becomes not so easy/cheap for people to manipulate history(having to re-mine 105000 blocks just to edit the utxo hash out). and so a more secure version of pruning while also having a smaller initial (ball)block download to keep and distribute to others
then they start working on the next 'ball' from the next year, with a 1 year including of hash in blocks before pruning off.
thus 2029 (block 945k) has a milestone ball of block 0-840k of 5gb + 210gb of chain of 840,001-945k
thus 2030 (block 1050k) has a milestone ball of block 0-945k 6gb+ 210gb of chain of 945,001-1050k
meaning nodes only store or IBD upto ~216gb securely where the UTXO set can be trusted and authenticated by peers
