No, you don't need a blockchain

Re:No, you don't need a blockchain by vidanay on Friday November 02, 2018 @12:18PM (#18364224)

What happens when blockchain "databases" grow to multiple terrabytes or petabytes? This presents a huge barrier to spinning up a new validation (mining) node. Are there plans for sharding blockchains?

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Re:No, you don't need a blockchain by zeroxfe on Friday November 02, 2018 @12:30PM (#18364356)

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

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Re:No, you don't need a blockchain by vidanay on Friday November 02, 2018 @12:34PM (#18364403)

Wow, that's some light reading for later!

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Re:No, you don't need a blockchain by azamatms on Friday November 02, 2018 @12:21PM (#18364254)

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

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Re:No, you don't need a blockchain by vidanay on Friday November 02, 2018 @12:26PM (#18364306)

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.

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Re:No, you don't need a blockchain by azamatms on Friday November 02, 2018 @12:31PM (#18364370)

There's already full-node implementations that address state tree pruning: https://wiki.parity.io/Getting-Synced#database-pruning

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Re:No, you don't need a blockchain by vidanay on Friday November 02, 2018 @12:32PM (#18364387)

@azamatms Thanks!

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