Good day all,
Maintaining the entire blockchain ledger and running a full relay by general public is a crucial, foundational aspect of BTC. It's also a substantial commitment in storage, bandwidth and increased need for security. While IMHO those who can, should do it as a public service, there's also a possibility of network somehow compensating those who maintain full ledger. I wonder if this has ever been pondered : can it be done in a way that would incentivize it for individual, independent users vs corporate agents with quasi-unlimited resources ? What are the downsides and upsides beyond obvious ? What does the future hold - what will full ledger look like in a decade from now and how viable will it be then for Joe Internet to keep it on his home network ? Has anyone considered a compression algo that would specialize in good blockchain performance ?
Currently (2023) full ledger is about 435 Gb. Bandwidth consumption of 200G/month in UPLOADS is reported norm, if left unchecked. I feel a systemic risk to the network that may drift momentum towards large users with unlimited storage and bandwidth in a way that may jeopardize security and decentralized nature of the network.
On other hand, how critical is most of that data to stability and security of the blockchain ? Perhaps my concerns are out of ignorance and it will do just fine when less then 0.01% of all self-hosted nodes maintain a full copy.
With respect
unixux
Actually there are thousand ways to centralize blockchain projects:
1)Mining hardware monopoly: now all the main mining facilities are equipped with specific devices, PCs and/or other devices for everyday use are no more efficient in terms of mining. Control over service and production of mining devices makes blockchain technology centralised.
2)Mining software monopoly: the same story.
3)Wallet software monopoly: control over wallets is also the way to centralisation.
4)Exchange to fiat control: now nearly none business initiatives accept
BTC directly, so the only way to use cryptomoney now is to exchange it for fiat. Moreover, legal status of cryptocurrencies is still unclear ewerywhere. So high degree of centralisation will persist as long as the adoption level is this low.
5)Whales become tycoons and rule the whole system. Cryptomoney distribution will be a problem if adoption level raises tremendously. The same thing we can observe in dollar and other fiat money systems: so called "10% of population controls 90% of money" principle. Crypto is also vulnerable to this disaster.
