Blockchain is too large?

[2tights]

I'm probably not posting this in the correct location, so please move it as need be.


First off, I'm not completely up to speed to on development efforts. However, I became aware of an effort to decrease the size of blockchain. My understanding is that the problem with it being so large, and continuing to grow, is one of overhead to do the work of verifying transactions which use coins that have long histories.

Is this a correct understanding?

What sort of ideas are floating around to resolve this?

So, its clear that I don't know what ideas are out there. My idea has probably already been shared and addressed. And, if it has please explain why the concept won't work. But here's my concept.


Once a transaction is verified on the network, doesn't it seem redundant that the same body of work be performed the next time the coin is part of a transaction?

Why not establish a method to flag and prune coins at a certain limit of transactions?

The life of a coin with this mechanism in place would be...

1. Miner creates COIN
2. COIN is sent and split into multiple transactions
3. Once each piece of that COIN reaches X number of transactions, flag for pruning
4. When any piece of the coin is spent at a future transaction, the miner would evoke the algorithm on its copy of the blockchain
5. The algorithm should purge that coin and replace it with a clean one.


Is this a stupid idea that illustrates my lack of understanding?

Would it be possible to perform a synchronized replacement of that coin?

[TwinWinNerD]

You can't "purge" a coin. What you can do is, to use bootstrapping to "clear" the older history of a coin.

[nest]

You can't "purge" a coin. What you can do is, to use bootstrapping to "clear" the older history of a coin.

Hope this could work.