What about building a library on bitcoin?

[BitcoinLibraryman]

While the Bitcoin network has introduced a revolutionary platform for data storage, the information currently stored on the blockchain often doesn't fully exploit this advantage. For instance, consider the analysis under the BRC20 protocol, where a token like sats has already generated 21,722,504 records of mint and transfer types. Each record takes up about 60 bytes on average, amounting to a total of approximately 1.3 billion bytes. To put this volume of data into perspective, let's compare it to the storage needs of literary works. Novels vary widely in length, so here we provide some average byte requirements for different categories of literature and how many such books could be stored within 1.3 billion bytes.

Based on the definitions of short, medium, and long novels, their average word counts are approximately 7,500 words, 40,000 words, and 80,000 words, respectively. If we calculate an average of 6 bytes per word, the byte requirements for each type of literary work are about 45,000 bytes, 240,000 bytes, and 480,000 bytes. The following table illustrates how many books could be inscribexd using the space occupied by the sats token under the BRC20 protocol:

This example shows us not just the vast capacity of blockchain data storage but also underscores how this technology can be leveraged beyond traditional applications. Just imagine, the same technology used to track and verify transactions can also serve as a digital fortress safeguarding our literary heritage. The potential is vast and varied, stretching from the realm of cryptocurrencies into the very core of human culture and knowledge.
The Masterpiece "One Hundred Years of Solitude" comprises approximately 150,000 words, which, including the foreword, occupies around 820,000 bytes. Remarkably, just one sats token can encapsulate 1,585 copies of this vast tome on the Bitcoin blockchain. While Bitcoin can host countless fungible tokens, named whatever we choose, how many such renowned works do we actually have? Even if we combined every major work in human history, it wouldn't fill the space occupied by a single fungible token.

This comparison highlights the immense storage capacity of the Bitcoin blockchain, which is currently widely used for recording financial transactions. If we were to repurpose this capability towards cultural and educational ends, its potential value would be enormous. Through the Bitcoin Library project, we could tap into this underutilized resource to create a digital global library, offering readers worldwide instant access to world literature. This would also provide a secure and enduring repository for humanity’s cultural heritage.
I truly understand bitcoin should be used as pay method. But the reality is bitcoin is misused as a big casino, runes, brc20, tap, atom and so many protocols just send many useless and meaningless information. As the example I mentioned, brc20-sats occupied almost many books' space. If we can use this to storage books that will be very meaningful and fun.
A master piece is always less than 1MB.

Guys, what do you think of this idea? Looking forward to your reply.
And if you have any recommendations to Library, just contact me: grok@btclibrary.org

[odolvlobo]

Data storage on the Bitcoin block chain is expensive and inefficient. The cost is not just the value of the ordinal. It must also include the transaction fee.

1 MB of witness data at 10 sats/vb currently costs $1575 (1MB / 4 * 10 s/vB / 100000000 * $63000). Check my math.

[ABCbits]

While the Bitcoin network has introduced a revolutionary platform for data storage, the information currently stored on the blockchain often doesn't fully exploit this advantage.
--snip--

Aside from OP_RETURN, Bitcoin developer never create feature designed for adding arbitrary data.

Data storage on the Bitcoin block chain is expensive and inefficient. The cost is not just the value of the ordinal. It must also include the transaction fee.

1 MB of witness data at 10 sats/vb currently costs $1575 (1MB / 4 * 10 s/vB / 100000000 * $63000). Check my math.

Your math is right. Although as reminder, the actual cost would be a bit higher due to other overhead (1st TX and non-witness data in 2nd TX). And IIRC it's categorized as non-standard TX since the TX size is higher than 100vKB, which means you need to either split it into multiple TX or ask pool to include it manually.

[BitcoinLibraryman]

Data storage on the Bitcoin block chain is expensive and inefficient. The cost is not just the value of the ordinal. It must also include the transaction fee.

1 MB of witness data at 10 sats/vb currently costs $1575 (1MB / 4 * 10 s/vB / 100000000 * $63000). Check my math.

Thanks for your reply.
As a matter of fact, a master piece like one hundred years of solitude is less than 1 MB.
The cost is not that unaffordable, because in humanity history, there are less than 200 books can be called world famous master pieces.
So, if we can build a self-circulation economic model. This may be true.

[BitcoinLibraryman]

While the Bitcoin network has introduced a revolutionary platform for data storage, the information currently stored on the blockchain often doesn't fully exploit this advantage.
--snip--

Aside from OP_RETURN, Bitcoin developer never create feature designed for adding arbitrary data.

Data storage on the Bitcoin block chain is expensive and inefficient. The cost is not just the value of the ordinal. It must also include the transaction fee.

1 MB of witness data at 10 sats/vb currently costs $1575 (1MB / 4 * 10 s/vB / 100000000 * $63000). Check my math.

Your math is right. Although as reminder, the actual cost would be a bit higher due to other overhead (1st TX and non-witness data in 2nd TX). And IIRC it's categorized as non-standard TX since the TX size is higher than 100vKB, which means you need to either split it into multiple TX or ask pool to include it manually.

Dear friend,
Thanks for your recommondations and calculations. It is really rigorous and precies
The fee to inscribe a book is quite high. But it is worth anyway, maybe there will be a solution…

[stompix]

Oh great, let's put some more stuff on the chain!
Can't wait to see some 4k movies there or the whole Simpsons show!

1 MB of witness data at 10 sats/vb currently costs $1575 (1MB / 4 * 10 s/vB / 100000000 * $63000). Check my math.

A guy paid 33BTC for a satoshi and hundreds pay way more than 2k for a JPG, the publicity a new author would get for releasing his book over the blockchain for free would be worth 100 times that fee!

[GeorgeJohn]

Everyone have it own ways of understanding or making bitcoin to be well known I've come across of Bitcoin notebooks in bookshop and I try to purchase them and see the content of the book so it is good if you can be able to accumulate different kind of Bitcoin books or cryptocurrency books I think it will be better and then when you establish your library Bitcoin house many people will patronize you because bitcoin is now circulating across other countries so I believe with that you may have a patronage from your library store

[btc78]

Guys, what do you think of this idea? Looking forward to your reply.

Personally I really like this idea. It is high time we maximize the utilization of blockchain technology as it has been expected that this will be our future anyway. However I don’t think we should do it on the bitcoin blockchain itself. Bitcoin was never made for this purpose. Bitcoin users dream too much of how else to utilize bitcoin but we have not even yet used it properly as a p2p transaction due to its high price and transaction fees.

[un_rank]

...because in humanity history, there are less than 200 books can be called world famous master pieces.
So, if we can build a self-circulation economic model. This may be true.

I'll argue this all day. There are at least 5,000 world famous master pieces that have been written since the beginning of time, don't ask me to mention them. You cannot limit our over 2000 years of civilization to less than 200 books.

Back to the topic at hand, as others have said, this will be too expensive to do on the Bitcoin network and is not the core purpose of the network either. We should get creative and look for more immutable way to store data.

- Jay -

[BlackHatCoiner]

We don't need to store a library on every computer running Bitcoin. If you want an unstoppable library, then check libgen and zlib*, both of which are probably the largest libraries in the world. For censorship-resistant browsing, we have Tor, we definitely don't need terabytes of data to store and verify forever.

* I would provide a link, but that'd probably result in a ban for reasons... 

A guy paid 33BTC for a satoshi

Might be a wild conspiracy, but wouldn't it make a lot of sense of that guy was the miner?

[hatshepsut93]

A guy paid 33BTC for a satoshi and hundreds pay way more than 2k for a JPG, the publicity a new author would get for releasing his book over the blockchain for free would be worth 100 times that fee!

Good thing that 99.999% of the world's population has no idea how to browse Bitcoin blockchain so it's not common to see Bitcoin blockchain being misused for publishing text.

IMO it's a serious flaw that it's even possible to add any data that is not necessary to send coins from one address to another. Blockchain space is already extremely scarce, why are we tolerating non-productive use of it?

[Hamza2424]

Hmm, yup Blockchain introduced a good way to store and secure data but a large amount of data cant be stored on Bitcoin's Blockchain because this is not for what the Bitcoin network was created, there are many Blockchain networks that provide the large data storage solutions on-chain, but Bitcoin hmm it's not for data storage as you know the block size issue + each and every Block is super expensive compared to other networks.

AR, ICP, and some others in which top of the list is the file, haha I know its a Bitcoin discussion but the topic's nature demands alternative names.

[stompix]

A guy paid 33BTC for a satoshi

Might be a wild conspiracy, but wouldn't it make a lot of sense of that guy was the miner?

Hmm, I don't get the part of the conspiracy....nor why it would make sense (if any) for him to be a miner.
The only two scenarios for this would be:
- money laundering, but why would Viabtc be part of this when they have their accounting book basically on the chain in plain view
- the usual collector with a ton of money and too little common sense

IMO it's a serious flaw that it's even possible to add any data that is not necessary to send coins from one address to another. Blockchain space is already extremely scarce, why are we tolerating non-productive use of it?

The "flaw" has existed for a long time under different aspects, it just made the news as it was more intensely used, and people will always find a way to abuse it.
Just for the laughs, I wonder if a Muslim would consider these coins "tainted":
https://mempool.space/tx/b5eb3d954b38e41960859aedd094070f7cf1047c1d8aa8492ae82c4c12ea511f

[yhiaali3]

Although it seems like a creative idea, as expected, everyone does not agree with you, because we have not yet finished with the problem of Ordinals and pictures of monkeys, which created a problem of congestion and high fees on the network.

We do not need to add new burdens to the network, which already has a small capacity. The Bitcoin community is thinking of solutions to relieve pressure on the network and not add more burden and congestion.

Now the problem will double because after halving and the decline in mining rewards, fees have increased, and any new addition could lead to fee madness that no one likes.

[Z-tight]

While the Bitcoin network has introduced a revolutionary platform for data storage

The BTC blockchain is not just for the storage of any kind of data, i know the 'flaw' in the network makes it possible for people to add 'useless' data to it, and stopping them would mean censorship, when the network is censorship resistant. However, this does not mean we should support adding data that isn't p2p tx's between users in the network, it only helps to fill up BTC blocks with data that isn't what the network was created for.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Hmm, I don't get the part of the conspiracy....nor why it would make sense (if any) for him to be a miner.

It makes a lot of sense if it was the miner, because then, they didn't pay 33 bitcoin. They paid a median-sized transaction in return for the "rarest" Ordinal or whatever-token. It makes no economic difference if the miner pays themselves 10 sat/vb or 1,000,000 sat/vb, but it apparently makes a significant difference if it's Ordinals.

This theory makes sense only if the miner mined it in secret, and didn't broadcast it. Not sure it's possible to verify this theory by checking some well-configured debug.log.

[stompix]

Hmm, I don't get the part of the conspiracy....nor why it would make sense (if any) for him to be a miner.

It makes a lot of sense if it was the miner, because then, they didn't pay 33 bitcoin. They paid a median-sized transaction in return for the "rarest" Ordinal or whatever-token. It makes no economic difference if the miner pays themselves 10 sat/vb or 1,000,000 sat/vb, but it apparently makes a significant difference if it's Ordinals.

Hmm, I think we are talking about different things.
The 33 BTC was an auction on Coinex:
https://www.coinex.com/en/halving-block-auction
It wasn't an inscription price of a tx, somebody paid "cash" 33 BTC for that satoshi!

[BlackHatCoiner]

It wasn't an inscription price of a tx, somebody paid "cash" 33 BTC for that satoshi!

Oh, my bad then. I thought you can buy / sell / create an inscription at secret, or that this could have happened at secret anyways.

[BitcoinLibraryman]

Guys, what do you think of this idea? Looking forward to your reply.

Personally I really like this idea. It is high time we maximize the utilization of blockchain technology as it has been expected that this will be our future anyway. However I don’t think we should do it on the bitcoin blockchain itself. Bitcoin was never made for this purpose. Bitcoin users dream too much of how else to utilize bitcoin but we have not even yet used it properly as a p2p transaction due to its high price and transaction fees.

Thanks for your reply and your support

[BitcoinLibraryman]

...because in humanity history, there are less than 200 books can be called world famous master pieces.
So, if we can build a self-circulation economic model. This may be true.

I'll argue this all day. There are at least 5,000 world famous master pieces that have been written since the beginning of time, don't ask me to mention them. You cannot limit our over 2000 years of civilization to less than 200 books.

Back to the topic at hand, as others have said, this will be too expensive to do on the Bitcoin network and is not the core purpose of the network either. We should get creative and look for more immutable way to store data.

- Jay -

As human society has developed, the means of storing information have evolved from primitive etchings on stones and walls to paper records, and now to modern electronic devices. While these advancements have significantly improved the efficiency and convenience of information storage, the durability of information from a long-term preservation perspective has shown a decreasing trend. For example, traditional paper materials can last for hundreds of years, whereas the lifespan of modern electronic storage devices typically spans only a few decades. Even information carved into more durable substances like stone cannot escape the fate of physical environmental damage and erosion over time.

In recent years, scientists have explored new methods using quartz glass as a data storage medium. This technology employs lasers to create minuscule physical changes within quartz glass, thereby achieving long-term data storage. Theoretically, the data preservation capabilities of quartz glass can reach hundreds of millions of years, significantly surpassing the lifecycle of traditional storage mediums. However, despite the significant advantages of quartz glass storage technology in terms of data preservation duration, it presents limitations in the convenience of information retrieval. This technology requires the use of specific reading devices to decode and access the stored data, which not only increases the cost of accessing information but also limits its accessibility.

In contrast, information storage based on the Bitcoin network, although theoretically not as physically durable as quartz glass, offers nearly instantaneous global access. With the aid of the internet, anyone can access data on the blockchain at any time from any location without the need for special equipment, greatly enhancing the circulation and availability of information.

As the value of Bitcoin has significantly increased, so too has the strength of its consensus mechanism. This consensus is not only rooted in the robustness of the technology but is also reflected in a large community of stakeholders—including miners, developers, investors, and millions of ordinary users. These participants create a strong network effect, with each individual contributing in their own way to the stability and security of the Bitcoin network. The immutability of information on Bitcoin is primarily attributed to several core principles.


In the end, I TOTALLY SUPPORT YOUR SAYINGS. Yes, not just 200 books. I mean there are 200 books you must and have to inscribe. I don't doubt we have more brilliant books than 200. It's just my list, if this library can be built, I will be happy to see your list~