no, memory is not just used for 1MB blocks. it's also used to store the mempools plus the UTXO set. large block attacks
Again, you're wrong on the technology. The UTXO set is not held in ram. (There is caching, but its arbritary in size, controlled by the dbcache argument).
as you know, even Gavin talks about this memory problem from UTXO. and yes, i read the Reddit thread that resulted in which you participated and i'm aware that UTXO can be dynamically cached according to needs.
http://gavinandresen.ninja/utxo-uhoh have the potential to collapse a full node by overloading the memory. at least, that's what they've been arguing.
"They" in that case is sketchy nutballs advocating these "stress tests", and _you_ arguing that unconfirmed transactions are the real danger.
Super weird that you're arguing that the Bitcoin network is overloaded with average of space usage in blocks, while you're calling your system "under utilized" when you're using a similar proportion of your disk and enough of your ram to push you deeply into swap.
i didn't say this full block spam attack we're undergoing wasn't affecting my node at_all. sure, i'm in swap, b/c of the huge #unconf tx's but it hasn't shut down or stressed my nodes to any degree. one of the arguments by Cripplecoiners was that these large block attacks would shut full nodes down from destabilization resulting in centralization. i'm not seeing that.