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What makes you think you need to store the whole blockchain? Older blocks can be pruned. The whitepaper discussed this. The UXTO set is all that's needed for bl

What makes you think you need to store the whole blockchain? Older blocks can be pruned. The whitepaper discussed this. The UXTO set is all that's needed for block validation, and that's quite small (currently ~50M).

Ajedi32 9y ago
Sounds great. Why haven't we done that yet? Like I said, the blockchain is currently ~150 GB. Seems to me it's already overdue for a good pruning.
- gruez 9y ago
  pruning was added almost 3 years ago https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/doc/release-notes/release-notes-0.11.0.md https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/doc/release-n...
  - Ajedi32 9y ago
    My point is: why do people still store full copies of the chain? If there are no downsides to this, why didn't we purge that 150 GB of useless data from the network a long time ago? And if people still _do_ need the full chain, then obviously that solution isn't sufficient to eliminate the problem I outlined in my previous comments.
    - SnowProblem 9y ago
      Because right now you can't distribute the UXTO set in a trustless way. Core developers blocked it two years ago for nonsensical reasons [1], one of the many reasons the community doesn't trust them. Work has picked up on this in BCH [2]. [1] https://bitcoincore.org/en/meetings/2016/03/10/#initial-block-download-ibd-with-pre-generated-signed-utxos https://bitcoincore.org/en/meetings/2016/03/10/#initial-bloc... [2] https://github.com/bitcoincashorg/workgroups/blob/master/wg-utxocommit-sync/workgroup.md https://github.com/bitcoincashorg/workgroups/blob/master/wg-...
      - Ajedi32 9y ago
        Wait, so that solution is essentially just trusting a few members of the community to decide what everyone's Bitcoin balance is? (Pick a few people to sign the UXTO and just trust their signatures?) I'm kinda surprised you consider the dev's rejection of that idea to be "nonsensical". Seems perfectly sensible to me that they wouldn't want to grant that kind of authority to any particular set of individuals. In particular, that method is most certainly _not_ "a trustless way" of distributing the UXTO. Hopefully whatever solution the BCH devs are working on isn't anything like that...
        SnowProblem 9y ago
        It's nonsensical to shutdown the discussion so quickly. This wasn't a BIP. You can hash the UXTO set and put the hash in the blockchain, or put the UXTO set in special blocks, or cross-validate the UXTO set across nodes. There are solutions.
gruez 9y ago
>currently ~50M actually, 2.7G https://statoshi.info/dashboard/db/unspent-transaction-output-set https://statoshi.info/dashboard/db/unspent-transaction-outpu...
- SnowProblem 9y ago
  Thanks for the correction. I was looking at the # of transactions. Still, quite small though.

Ajedi32 9y ago

Sounds great. Why haven't we done that yet? Like I said, the blockchain is currently ~150 GB. Seems to me it's already overdue for a good pruning.

gruez 9y ago
pruning was added almost 3 years ago https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/doc/release-notes/release-notes-0.11.0.md https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/doc/release-n...
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  My point is: why do people still store full copies of the chain? If there are no downsides to this, why didn't we purge that 150 GB of useless data from the network a long time ago? And if people still _do_ need the full chain, then obviously that solution isn't sufficient to eliminate the problem I outlined in my previous comments.
  - SnowProblem 9y ago
    Because right now you can't distribute the UXTO set in a trustless way. Core developers blocked it two years ago for nonsensical reasons [1], one of the many reasons the community doesn't trust them. Work has picked up on this in BCH [2]. [1] https://bitcoincore.org/en/meetings/2016/03/10/#initial-block-download-ibd-with-pre-generated-signed-utxos https://bitcoincore.org/en/meetings/2016/03/10/#initial-bloc... [2] https://github.com/bitcoincashorg/workgroups/blob/master/wg-utxocommit-sync/workgroup.md https://github.com/bitcoincashorg/workgroups/blob/master/wg-...
    - Ajedi32 9y ago
      Wait, so that solution is essentially just trusting a few members of the community to decide what everyone's Bitcoin balance is? (Pick a few people to sign the UXTO and just trust their signatures?) I'm kinda surprised you consider the dev's rejection of that idea to be "nonsensical". Seems perfectly sensible to me that they wouldn't want to grant that kind of authority to any particular set of individuals. In particular, that method is most certainly _not_ "a trustless way" of distributing the UXTO. Hopefully whatever solution the BCH devs are working on isn't anything like that...
      - SnowProblem 9y ago
        It's nonsensical to shutdown the discussion so quickly. This wasn't a BIP. You can hash the UXTO set and put the hash in the blockchain, or put the UXTO set in special blocks, or cross-validate the UXTO set across nodes. There are solutions.

gruez 9y ago

>currently ~50M actually, 2.7G https://statoshi.info/dashboard/db/unspent-transaction-output-set https://statoshi.info/dashboard/db/unspent-transaction-outpu...

SnowProblem 9y ago
Thanks for the correction. I was looking at the # of transactions. Still, quite small though.