Could a blockchain* be invented that deals with balances and not coins? If you don't have to track coins you can only update the newest balances. That would probably scale because all you have to do is update new balances in every network "refresh" when money movement took place - and if you have, say, 1bn accounts, you'll still have 1bn accounts after 10 days of transactions - only the balances will be different in them. So, practically, it doesn't get more bloated. I can consider several problems but are they insurmountable?
* It doesn't need to be a blockchain per se. It could well be something like a paypal-type database but decentralized/distributed that has network consensus on what the balances are.
Sorry No, not in anything that will be DECENTRALIZED. I went through all these sort of design diversions and found flaws in all of them.
I appreciate of course that everyone is still interested in finding solutions. We all know we need a solution. But if there is no solution, we have to accept the laws of physics. Please see
the other thread I started for more detailed discussion on ideas and what I (and others) think works and doesn't work.
If we had a 99.9% compression algorithm*, that is able to fold data again and again, reducing a 2mb file to 4kb, but requires a CPU tradeoff for all this folding/unfolding, would that work for scaling?