Thinking about scaling again. What are the arguments for and against everyday people needing to be able to run full nodes? (small block/big block root arguments)
I'm not saying we need big blocks or Bitcoin is doomed, but I am saying that with technology getting better and storage getting cheaper, the need for small blocks will decrease.
Thoughts?
#askNostr #bitcoinscaling #bitcoin #layer2 #BTC #BCH
Your thinking about it too much. Run the software or don't bitcoin still works either way. I look at it like buying a modem and router in order to have internet in your house. Right now it's foreign to most people but eventually it will make sense for those that explore. If you don't buy the equipment you will end up renting it from a business in some non physical way.
I don't think I am. Bitcoin still has a scaling problem if self-custody is not to be a thing of the past.
How does bitcoin have a scaling problem?
Each person maintains only a couple lightning channels per year, big block:
8B people * 4tx/yr * 250B/tx = 8TB/yr
Each year, a full node would have to add $150 in storage if they only use disks
VS:
Small block, self custody:
8B people * 1tx/person * 10min/2700tx = 56.3yrs
Time to make one transaction per person art current rate.
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There's no way to self-custody for every person at the current rate. As it currently stands, an on-chain transaction will be a once-in-a-lifetime event for 99.99% of people.
Same arguments had been made before. Read up on the “block size wars” and you will find plenty of thoughts on the topic that are valid today still
I'm looking for a synopsis. Got a source to which I can go?
There's a book called The Blocksize War. I have not read it but hear it's a good overview.
Okay. I'll see about checking it out.
I just read “Hijacking Bitcoin" which features the other side to the block size wars. Ultimately, it seems that power lies with the miners. If there are not enough transaction fees to generate revenue, they will go to other blockchains. Transaction fees being too high, make people not want to spend (not to mention HODL mentality). Small block BTC has another cycle or two in it before these effects are relevant to price. But it’s hard to argue against the fundamental economic principle of a store of value emerging out of a medium of exchange, not the other way around.
I have an idea. What if to be consider to be running a "full node" one participates in a database sharding proof of storage system, so it's ensured that the full chain will persist, but not necessarily on any single node? I can imagine a RAID striping type system across nodes. If a node keeps X of every Y blocks, and somehow proves it to its neighbors, and there are Y groups who all keep track of neighbors, the storage needed per node will be X/Y of the total size of the chain. Let's say 5 of 256, so adjacent groups have an 80% overlap, while reducing load to about 2%. Reconstruction would be quite rapid. If a group goes empty, the data could be reconstructed from four other groups, and a node could automatically manage to which group it is assigned. This would allow meaningful participation while greatly reducing load. Whole-chain full nodes would still be a thing for those who would want that, obviously.
To maintain the full node aspect of verifying chain integrity, each node proves to itself the change to the database, and the group publishes the agreed upon proof to the chain with a many-multi-sig (allowing for a latency), sorta like a parity, so the shard system will occupy exactly one transaction per block. This would become the basis, then, for a layer 2 of virtual addresses, wherein an on-chain address is non-custodially occupied by many sub addresses, and the per-shard database proof also contains the transactions of virtual addresses. Cross group transactions might have to be on-chain, but they could at least be rolled up after a signed cross-group acknowledgement (making the other group acknowledges the transactions into its virtual addresses). Cross-group lightning network could also become a thing.
This is starting to feel a bit like drive chains, NGL, but still a bit different.
nostr:note1v4wlqp57t34k5ff9kghdf9l58cgapedqf6099gc3lap0n3djprwqj090hd
How expensive should it be to run a full node? Current low-mid end hardware costs about 0.001BTC, and storage is about 10MB/sat. If the blocks are fill for a year, that's a little more than 5ksat/yr. 100ksat startup cost and 5ksat/yr is really quite cheap.
With hardware costs going down and performance going up, I think a block size increase could be warranted. Carefully and cautiously, we could try 2MB, and then 4MB in another four years, maybe keeping trend to a maximum of 32MB as the adoption reaches the end of the S-curve.
A balance must be struck between throughput and security. The narrow optima is widening between these as of now, and I'd rather a world in which self custody and everyday people interacting with L1 remains a thing for my children.
