4 ms·

Internet connection? It's under 128kbps, less than a 2 channel ISDN link. And for someone that cannot afford a 100$ drive every 5 years, toss the old blocks af

Internet connection? It's under 128kbps, less than a 2 channel ISDN link. And for someone that cannot afford a 100$ drive every 5 years, toss the old blocks after saving a checkpoint and just keep the last X months plus UTXOs? How does this improve with offchain transactions? What's the point of validating the blockchain if it's no longer a peer to peer network? That can't be any better than validating from checkpoints.

MichaelApproved 9y ago
> It's under 128kbps, less than a 2 channel ISDN link. How long would it take you to download the initial data? I don't think a 2 channel ISDN link could ever catch up.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  I'm saying the extra connection is only that much. Right know such a link would take half a year to catch up. If it increased to 8MB, after a year the blockchain would be about half a TB, so with a 1Mbps connection you could catch up in 50 days. But again, you can't compare this to going offchain! You can never catch up with the private networks doing settlement on BTC. But if you just want to validate going forward, then you need 2GB of UTXO data, plus a checkpoint hash and you can validate from there on out.
ve55 9y ago
Not everyone running a node has a plethora of available resources for it. It would be great if we could keep scaling bitcoin by just increasing the blocksize, but by the time you get to a block size like 8MB or 32MB, things get really difficult. From a Bitfury paper on the subject [1]: 8MB blocksize requires: 411GB/year extra space, 1184kB/s average bandwidth, 35.4TB/year bandwidth, and 32GB RAM. If that isn't enough to scale, which it won't be if Bitcoin is to fulfill its goals of being able to compete with the currently leading payment networks, take a look at something like 32MB blocks: 32MB blocksize requires: 1643GB/year extra space, 4736kB/s average bandwidth, 141TB/year bandwidth, and 128GB RAM. Although these numbers are possible to meet, it's obvious that not everyone is going to have hardware like this just to run a Bitcoin node. So it's predicted that so many nodes will be excluded for larger blocksizes (90%+), that the decentralization will take a huge blow. [1] http://bitfury.com/content/5-white-papers-research/block-size-1.1.1.pdf http://bitfury.com/content/5-white-papers-research/block-siz..., page 4
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  And what kind of blow will decentralization take when no one wants to run a node that only serves the purpose of settlement for a few large players? The BW calculations are misleading - that counts transmitting the blockchain to other nodes. To validate transactions and participate, you don't need to upload it, only download. Also, if we consider transaction history irrelevant since Lightning or other offchain solutions are OK, then all that is needed is the last few blocks and UTXO. As Satoshi said, once client-only is in, it doesn't really matter, and the answer is to not care how big it gets. (Sure, quoting him isn't an end-all, but it shows the original design goals.) Also, none of this explains why an increase to say, 2MB was never done, unless it's a game of chicken.
sillysaurus3 9y ago
Many (most?) people have a 1TB/mo cap.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  8MB blocks is only about 33GB/month.
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    People won't even be able to start participating because they can't download more than 1TB in a month.
    - MichaelGG 9y ago
      They can start with just the UTXOs, 2GB, and the last few blocks plus a checkpoint.
      - gruez 9y ago
        which has to be from a trusted source because you can't verify anything with just the UTXO + last few blocks.
        sillysaurus3 9y ago
        Indeed. My main concern is that core tech (e.g. the standard Bitcoin app) has never had a massive security breach. But the only way to use it is if consumers can realistically download the entire blockchain. I guess it was just a matter of time until this happened, though ideally it would've been many years rather than two years.
        MichaelGG 9y ago
        You always need a trusted source! So making the trust the first block or the millionth... Not sure there's much difference.

MichaelApproved 9y ago

> It's under 128kbps, less than a 2 channel ISDN link. How long would it take you to download the initial data? I don't think a 2 channel ISDN link could ever catch up.

MichaelGG 9y ago
I'm saying the extra connection is only that much. Right know such a link would take half a year to catch up. If it increased to 8MB, after a year the blockchain would be about half a TB, so with a 1Mbps connection you could catch up in 50 days. But again, you can't compare this to going offchain! You can never catch up with the private networks doing settlement on BTC. But if you just want to validate going forward, then you need 2GB of UTXO data, plus a checkpoint hash and you can validate from there on out.

ve55 9y ago

Not everyone running a node has a plethora of available resources for it. It would be great if we could keep scaling bitcoin by just increasing the blocksize, but by the time you get to a block size like 8MB or 32MB, things get really difficult. From a Bitfury paper on the subject [1]: 8MB blocksize requires: 411GB/year extra space, 1184kB/s average bandwidth, 35.4TB/year bandwidth, and 32GB RAM. If that isn't enough to scale, which it won't be if Bitcoin is to fulfill its goals of being able to compete with the currently leading payment networks, take a look at something like 32MB blocks: 32MB blocksize requires: 1643GB/year extra space, 4736kB/s average bandwidth, 141TB/year bandwidth, and 128GB RAM. Although these numbers are possible to meet, it's obvious that not everyone is going to have hardware like this just to run a Bitcoin node. So it's predicted that so many nodes will be excluded for larger blocksizes (90%+), that the decentralization will take a huge blow. [1] http://bitfury.com/content/5-white-papers-research/block-size-1.1.1.pdf http://bitfury.com/content/5-white-papers-research/block-siz..., page 4

MichaelGG 9y ago
And what kind of blow will decentralization take when no one wants to run a node that only serves the purpose of settlement for a few large players? The BW calculations are misleading - that counts transmitting the blockchain to other nodes. To validate transactions and participate, you don't need to upload it, only download. Also, if we consider transaction history irrelevant since Lightning or other offchain solutions are OK, then all that is needed is the last few blocks and UTXO. As Satoshi said, once client-only is in, it doesn't really matter, and the answer is to not care how big it gets. (Sure, quoting him isn't an end-all, but it shows the original design goals.) Also, none of this explains why an increase to say, 2MB was never done, unless it's a game of chicken.

sillysaurus3 9y ago

Many (most?) people have a 1TB/mo cap.

MichaelGG 9y ago
8MB blocks is only about 33GB/month.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  People won't even be able to start participating because they can't download more than 1TB in a month.
  - MichaelGG 9y ago
    They can start with just the UTXOs, 2GB, and the last few blocks plus a checkpoint.
    - gruez 9y ago
      which has to be from a trusted source because you can't verify anything with just the UTXO + last few blocks.
      - sillysaurus3 9y ago
        Indeed. My main concern is that core tech (e.g. the standard Bitcoin app) has never had a massive security breach. But the only way to use it is if consumers can realistically download the entire blockchain. I guess it was just a matter of time until this happened, though ideally it would've been many years rather than two years.
      - MichaelGG 9y ago
        You always need a trusted source! So making the trust the first block or the millionth... Not sure there's much difference.