Isn't the major issue the utxo set bloat and not raw storage? We went from 4gb to 12gb in 2 years and that's forever.
Discussion
In my eyes, this is a non issue long term & is a sign of a more dispersed / decentralized supply.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to be efficient ofc, but to say this is such a big issue that our machines can't handle this, well that seems to be a far cry from the truth.
Again, this is just how I see / understand it.
Fact is, running a node gets harder over time and not easier. Which indicates that technology progress does not keep pace, which means less nodes, hollowing out bitcoins overall value proposition of decentralized money.
There was a nice talk by Luke where he outlines this issue.
It was this: https://youtu.be/CqNEQS80-h4
This focuses on block size, but it's true for other things like bandwidth, ram and compute which is more affected by size of the utxo set.
~6min mark Luke states that the "tech" is improving 18% a year meanwhile Bitcoin is growing at a faster pace than improvement.
This is a fair assumption for a possible short term headwind with running a full node, the issue with this alarmism is that it's not 1:1 - Bitcoin in its current form is not close to exceeding current tech capacity for the avg onchain Bitcoin user - knots isn't even the solution for this either way.
~15min mark Luke states that a snapshot changes the trust model.
I don't see how that's the case as currently you have to trust the developer release of Bitcoin core or knots anyways.
If the snapshot allows you to use Bitcoin quickly meanwhile the IBD is reverified from genesis in the background that would be a sufficient solution in the short term.