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Crypcocurrencies need to stop requiring us all to hold every transaction in one unified blockchain dump. There has to be some way to break the network out into

Crypcocurrencies need to stop requiring us all to hold every transaction in one unified blockchain dump. There has to be some way to break the network out into shards while still preserving the distributed nature and ability to pay anyone. No matter what we do, moving and storing every single transaction is insane. It's like my bank account needing to know what every person in the world's purchases are this morning. I shouldn't need to know what some guy on the other side of the world spent his lunch money on, just to buy my own. What am I missing? Surely the uber com sci phd's have fully solved this?

GBiT 9y ago
You don't need to hold every transaction why do you think you have to keep all blockchain? Right now you can use pruning on a client like Core ar Unlimited or you can use light clients like Electrum.
- richardw 9y ago
  I do use a light wallet but the main blockchain doesn't have sharding as a primary design. It's gone from mb to many gb.
- honestlyreally 9y ago
  People who promote convenience without talking about the cost scare me the most.
ComputerGuru 9y ago
It's not like Bitcoin does it because it _wants_ to; in fact, semi-anonymity is a semi-goal of Bitcoin. It's just a tough problem to solve differently. I haven't heard of any recent updates, but I believe ZCoin was supposed to address this issue, to an extent.
Temasik 9y ago
Sounds like iota.org to me a blockchainless cryptocurrency based on directed arcyclic graph
buzzybee 9y ago
Worse-is-better: we already "solved" it with altcoins.
CyberDildonics 9y ago
-They don't require everyone to hold the whole blockchain, you can have a thin wallet where the blockchain is held elsewhere. -An ecosystem of multiple different currencies does create sharding. -Merkle trees are a hierarchy of hashes so that someone can hold only the parts of the chain they want to look at and know that they are on the right chain by syncing large parts of it with their hash as a whole. -At Visa level transaction rates of 300 Million transactions per day and the minimum size of about 4 transactions per KB in bitcoin, that means that at current 8TB hard drive prices it costs about $900 USD per year to store all the transactions. This would also require a steady connection of at least 870 KB/s to sync with the chain. In short, there are plenty of solutions with even the extreme examples of involvement being very obtainable by the average person in a developed country.
kanzure 9y ago
sharding has the same problem: if you want to check whether a coin has been double spent, then you need to go look at all the relevant shards anyway. http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/scalingbitcoin/sharding-the-blockchain/ http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/scalingbitcoin/sharding-th...
xkarga00 9y ago
https://bitcoin.org/en/glossary/simplified-payment-verification https://bitcoin.org/en/glossary/simplified-payment-verificat...
j_s 9y ago
All transactions within an exchange are off-chain, right?
DennisP 9y ago
The Ethereum project includes sharding as part of their scaling plan. Here's a fairly detailed overview of the problems involved, and how they're attempting to address them: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Sharding-FAQ https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Sharding-FAQ
honestlyreally 9y ago
>What am i missing? Sharding is possible because you trust the db. Blockchains are databases built on trustlessness.
honestlyreally 9y ago
>What am i missing? Sharding is possible because you trust the db. Blockchains are databases built on trustlessness.
RichardHeart 9y ago
Solved perhaps: http://www.coindesk.com/mimblewimble-silly-sounding-tech-seriously-reform-bitcoin/ http://www.coindesk.com/mimblewimble-silly-sounding-tech-ser...

GBiT 9y ago

You don't need to hold every transaction why do you think you have to keep all blockchain? Right now you can use pruning on a client like Core ar Unlimited or you can use light clients like Electrum.

richardw 9y ago
I do use a light wallet but the main blockchain doesn't have sharding as a primary design. It's gone from mb to many gb.
honestlyreally 9y ago
People who promote convenience without talking about the cost scare me the most.

ComputerGuru 9y ago

It's not like Bitcoin does it because it _wants_ to; in fact, semi-anonymity is a semi-goal of Bitcoin. It's just a tough problem to solve differently. I haven't heard of any recent updates, but I believe ZCoin was supposed to address this issue, to an extent.

Temasik 9y ago

Sounds like iota.org to me a blockchainless cryptocurrency based on directed arcyclic graph

buzzybee 9y ago

Worse-is-better: we already "solved" it with altcoins.

CyberDildonics 9y ago

-They don't require everyone to hold the whole blockchain, you can have a thin wallet where the blockchain is held elsewhere. -An ecosystem of multiple different currencies does create sharding. -Merkle trees are a hierarchy of hashes so that someone can hold only the parts of the chain they want to look at and know that they are on the right chain by syncing large parts of it with their hash as a whole. -At Visa level transaction rates of 300 Million transactions per day and the minimum size of about 4 transactions per KB in bitcoin, that means that at current 8TB hard drive prices it costs about $900 USD per year to store all the transactions. This would also require a steady connection of at least 870 KB/s to sync with the chain. In short, there are plenty of solutions with even the extreme examples of involvement being very obtainable by the average person in a developed country.

kanzure 9y ago

sharding has the same problem: if you want to check whether a coin has been double spent, then you need to go look at all the relevant shards anyway. http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/scalingbitcoin/sharding-the-blockchain/ http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/scalingbitcoin/sharding-th...

xkarga00 9y ago

https://bitcoin.org/en/glossary/simplified-payment-verification https://bitcoin.org/en/glossary/simplified-payment-verificat...

j_s 9y ago

All transactions within an exchange are off-chain, right?

DennisP 9y ago

The Ethereum project includes sharding as part of their scaling plan. Here's a fairly detailed overview of the problems involved, and how they're attempting to address them: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Sharding-FAQ https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Sharding-FAQ

honestlyreally 9y ago

>What am i missing? Sharding is possible because you trust the db. Blockchains are databases built on trustlessness.

honestlyreally 9y ago

>What am i missing? Sharding is possible because you trust the db. Blockchains are databases built on trustlessness.

RichardHeart 9y ago

Solved perhaps: http://www.coindesk.com/mimblewimble-silly-sounding-tech-seriously-reform-bitcoin/ http://www.coindesk.com/mimblewimble-silly-sounding-tech-ser...