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Bitcoin so far doesn't scale. Not only in terms of transaction fees and processing times... but also at the most basic of levels. What will happen when the blo

Bitcoin so far doesn't scale. Not only in terms of transaction fees and processing times... but also at the most basic of levels. What will happen when the blockchain doesn't fit in a median harddrive? The decentralization narrative will go away. Only a few people will have enough storage for the blockchain and you will go back to having to trust someone.

gst 8y ago
> The decentralization narrative will go away. Only a few people will have enough storage for the blockchain and you will go back to having to trust someone. With a pruning client you only need to store a small subset of the blockchain and there are no major changes in regards to trust. Your client still verifies every single transaction, but it removes data from the chain that it won't need anymore in the future (e.g., an old transaction that already has been spent). With a SPV client your client only stores the chain headers and then only requests the required data from a server. SPV clients need a small amount of resources and can run on mobile phones. At the same time most of the important functionality (transaction signing, transaction verification, ...) happens still locally and the level of trust that you need to put into the servers is quite small.
- hobofan 8y ago
  Even beyond simple pruning, there are techniques that currently don't seem to be in use yet and should make chain-size a non-issue for the near future. If written about it in another comment here before[0]. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16929524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16929524
samdoidge 8y ago
That depends if the Bitcoin blockchain size is growing at a faster rate than the storage available on a median hard drive. The blockchain is currently at 160~GB, and I believe it will grow around <60GB a year. [1] In 10 years it may be ~760GB, but the median hard drive shouldn't be too far from this. [1] https://charts.bitcoin.com/chart/blockchain-size https://charts.bitcoin.com/chart/blockchain-size
whataretensors 8y ago
Satoshi's white paper talks about this problem and why it's not an issue. It's only 3 pages.

gst 8y ago

> The decentralization narrative will go away. Only a few people will have enough storage for the blockchain and you will go back to having to trust someone. With a pruning client you only need to store a small subset of the blockchain and there are no major changes in regards to trust. Your client still verifies every single transaction, but it removes data from the chain that it won't need anymore in the future (e.g., an old transaction that already has been spent). With a SPV client your client only stores the chain headers and then only requests the required data from a server. SPV clients need a small amount of resources and can run on mobile phones. At the same time most of the important functionality (transaction signing, transaction verification, ...) happens still locally and the level of trust that you need to put into the servers is quite small.

hobofan 8y ago
Even beyond simple pruning, there are techniques that currently don't seem to be in use yet and should make chain-size a non-issue for the near future. If written about it in another comment here before[0]. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16929524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16929524

samdoidge 8y ago

That depends if the Bitcoin blockchain size is growing at a faster rate than the storage available on a median hard drive. The blockchain is currently at 160~GB, and I believe it will grow around <60GB a year. [1] In 10 years it may be ~760GB, but the median hard drive shouldn't be too far from this. [1] https://charts.bitcoin.com/chart/blockchain-size https://charts.bitcoin.com/chart/blockchain-size

whataretensors 8y ago

Satoshi's white paper talks about this problem and why it's not an issue. It's only 3 pages.