3 ms·

What happens when blockchain "databases" grow to multiple terrabytes or petabytes? This presents a huge barrier to spinning up a new validation (mining) node. A

• azamatms 8y ago
  Bitcoin for example (and many others), will prune old blocks that are no longer required to make transactions on the network. If a block has all unspent inputs used up, the block will be pruned
  • vidanay 8y ago
    That is a logical solution for Bitcoin. Doesn't Etherium track transactions back to the beginning of time though? That sounds like a Shlemiel The Painter problem.
    • azamatms 8y ago
      There's already full-node implementations that address state tree pruning: https://wiki.parity.io/Getting-Synced#database-pruning https://wiki.parity.io/Getting-Synced#database-pruning
    • vidanay 8y ago
      @azamatms Thanks!
• zeroxfe 8y ago
  Yes, there are (and some that already do), but doing it correctly is actually pretty complicated. Checkout Ethereum's sharding docs: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Sharding-FAQs https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Sharding-FAQs
  • vidanay 8y ago
    Wow, that's some light reading for later!