4 ms·

I'm not sure what you mean by "assume storage space will expand exponentially", since there is only a limited number of potential active crypto-currency users,

I'm not sure what you mean by "assume storage space will expand exponentially", since there is only a limited number of potential active crypto-currency users, making a small number of daily transactions (ignoring things like High Frequency Trading), recorded in a blockchain that grows linearly over time. Would you say that the credit card network, or PayPal, has exponentially increasing storage requirements? It's possible for Bitcoin (for example) to be decentralised and useful to the world and only require linearly increasing storage space. Fortunately it seems that storage technology will continue to scale linearly over the coming years too: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15064/seagate-roadmap.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15064/seagate-roadmap.png

hnews_account_1 7y ago
I should've phrased that better. What I meant was to assume consumer affordable storage space will increase in size exponentially i.e. if we pay $0.01 / GB today, we should be paying fractions of that fraction in a year (because obviously "exponential" is loose term here). > (ignoring things like High Frequency Trading) HFT is not a blockchain transaction. They are off blockchain transactions entirely because they trade money between bitcoin / other cryptos and dollars. > there is only a limited number of potential active crypto-currency users My entire point is that this limits them from growing. If the blockchain is kept from exploding, it helps to onboard more users. > Would you say that the credit card network, or PayPal, has exponentially increasing storage requirements? Indeed not. But their user base is now standardised. So they have a predictable number of transactions every second. However, their storage requirements are still obviously industrial grade server farms. The point of bitcoin is that everyone should have a copy of every transaction (excluding lightning network transactions). You see the connection? Not all of us can have our own server farms. If we all wants to store every transaction in the way the parent of my previous comment alluded to (increase block size), each of us will need our own mini server farm i.e. exponential storage growth. > It's possible for Bitcoin (for example) to be decentralised and useful to the world and only require linearly increasing storage space. Yes. It'll level off at some point. But we are far, faaar away from that point. So it'll take quite a while before it levels off.
- dane-pgp 7y ago
  > The point of bitcoin is that everyone should have a copy of every transaction (excluding lightning network transactions). Is that the point of bitcoin? Satoshi said: > Long before the network gets anywhere near as large as that, it would be safe for users to use Simplified Payment Verification (section 8) to check for double spending, which only requires having the chain of block headers, or about 12KB per day. Only people trying to create new coins would need to run network nodes. https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/2/ https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/2/ (He also didn't say anything about "lightning network transactions".) > If we all wants to store every transaction in the way the parent of my previous comment alluded to (increase block size), each of us will need our own mini server farm i.e. exponential storage growth. The BTC blockchain is currently 250 GB. If blocks had been 10 times bigger, the blockchain would still be less than 3 TB, and blocks would almost never be full, which would reduce transaction fees and help to onboard more users. I don't think that storing 3 TB of data requires a server farm.
  - gl00pp 7y ago
    So 10 times (the current) 7 transactions per second = 70tps. And it needs 3TB?? Cmon, that's not lot of gain for a lot of loss of control by the average.
  - RustyRussell 7y ago
    Except SPV as Satoshi described doesn't work, so the trade-off becomes "can users simply trust miners" to which the answer from experience is a resounding "no".
    - lawn 7y ago
      For context, this is one of the main devs of the lightning network, who's furthering the propaganda that "miners cannot be trusted". Which is a pretty dumb thing to say, since it's the core security assumption for Bitcoin to work at all.
  - hnews_account_1 7y ago

hnews_account_1 7y ago

I should've phrased that better. What I meant was to assume consumer affordable storage space will increase in size exponentially i.e. if we pay $0.01 / GB today, we should be paying fractions of that fraction in a year (because obviously "exponential" is loose term here). > (ignoring things like High Frequency Trading) HFT is not a blockchain transaction. They are off blockchain transactions entirely because they trade money between bitcoin / other cryptos and dollars. > there is only a limited number of potential active crypto-currency users My entire point is that this limits them from growing. If the blockchain is kept from exploding, it helps to onboard more users. > Would you say that the credit card network, or PayPal, has exponentially increasing storage requirements? Indeed not. But their user base is now standardised. So they have a predictable number of transactions every second. However, their storage requirements are still obviously industrial grade server farms. The point of bitcoin is that everyone should have a copy of every transaction (excluding lightning network transactions). You see the connection? Not all of us can have our own server farms. If we all wants to store every transaction in the way the parent of my previous comment alluded to (increase block size), each of us will need our own mini server farm i.e. exponential storage growth. > It's possible for Bitcoin (for example) to be decentralised and useful to the world and only require linearly increasing storage space. Yes. It'll level off at some point. But we are far, faaar away from that point. So it'll take quite a while before it levels off.

dane-pgp 7y ago
> The point of bitcoin is that everyone should have a copy of every transaction (excluding lightning network transactions). Is that the point of bitcoin? Satoshi said: > Long before the network gets anywhere near as large as that, it would be safe for users to use Simplified Payment Verification (section 8) to check for double spending, which only requires having the chain of block headers, or about 12KB per day. Only people trying to create new coins would need to run network nodes. https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/2/ https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/2/ (He also didn't say anything about "lightning network transactions".) > If we all wants to store every transaction in the way the parent of my previous comment alluded to (increase block size), each of us will need our own mini server farm i.e. exponential storage growth. The BTC blockchain is currently 250 GB. If blocks had been 10 times bigger, the blockchain would still be less than 3 TB, and blocks would almost never be full, which would reduce transaction fees and help to onboard more users. I don't think that storing 3 TB of data requires a server farm.
- gl00pp 7y ago
  So 10 times (the current) 7 transactions per second = 70tps. And it needs 3TB?? Cmon, that's not lot of gain for a lot of loss of control by the average.
- RustyRussell 7y ago
  Except SPV as Satoshi described doesn't work, so the trade-off becomes "can users simply trust miners" to which the answer from experience is a resounding "no".
  - lawn 7y ago
    For context, this is one of the main devs of the lightning network, who's furthering the propaganda that "miners cannot be trusted". Which is a pretty dumb thing to say, since it's the core security assumption for Bitcoin to work at all.
- hnews_account_1 7y ago