new OS on a new box here, been...oh I don't know...year and a half since I have to set bitcoin QT up from scratch
sweet baby zombie jesus, hours and hours, I got hours to go, still 15 weeks back and the weeks are obviously getting bigger all the time
obviously this has to be a tired topic so forgive me, what are the strategies that have been proposed to deal with this? Couple years ago it was inconvenient, now it is ridiculous, couple years from now it will be untenable.
mass adoption indeed, lol
sweet baby zombie jesus, hours and hours, I got hours to go, still 15 weeks back and the weeks are obviously getting bigger all the time
obviously this has to be a tired topic so forgive me, what are the strategies that have been proposed to deal with this? Couple years ago it was inconvenient, now it is ridiculous, couple years from now it will be untenable.
mass adoption indeed, lol
Hey, you can read up a bit on potential improvements in the milestone .9 release which is in the pipe:
https://bitcoinfoundation.org/blog/?p=290
I mention it because it has some very interesting stuff related to this problem. Of note: Headers first downloading, and Provably prunable outputs. I'll pause while every reads and absorbs the wisdom.
... ... ...Of note for your question:
Headers first is a breakthrough that will allow true bit-torrent style parallel downloading of the blockchain. The reason it's quite slow now is that it must be downloaded in serial sequence from block 0 to now. Headers only means you can essentially just grab all the block headers to build a "table of contents" so to speak for the whole chain. Then AFTER this, you can fetch the transaction details of each block to fill in all the gaps in a massively parallel way.
Proveably Prunable outputs is a new way to help mitigate future size explosion in the block chain by allowing a legitimate way for messages to be inserted into the blockchain - and most importantly to let nodes ignore these messages if they don't want to archive them. It creates the potential to have "archival" nodes on heavy duty servers that store everything for everyone, and then "normal" nodes which just store transactions. Currently we all store everything which is not sustainable for average users as you have discovered.
Not mentioned but coming hopefully before release 1.0: methods to remove spent transactions from the blockchain to start to prune the size down and hopefully level off at some plateau size that is more stable and less exponential. There have been many proposals on how to do this, but i suspect it would involve the spin off of another "type" of bitcoin node which is intended for desktop computer use which has a version of the blockchain that has fully spent transactions summarized by some cryptographic method like merkle trees and then removed to save space. This is a really gnarly / ugly problem though so i think it's been lowered in priority compared to all the other key useability features they are working on.
As for mass adoption: the future will not look like today. Pulling out my crystal ball, i see: Full heavy weight nodes will shift into serious players hands - ie: serious investors, financial institutions and hard core hobbyists. "Light chain" clients with compressed or summarized block chains will fill some middle ground. Light weight clients with no local block chain (like Multibit) will fill another niche. And then for the unrully mobs and unwashed masses - they will use banks with possibly bitcoin backends (using full heavy nodes).
Why? The idea of having the responsibility to keep wallets safe and not letting them get stolen for example by malware is a responsibility which most average folks do not want to have. They will prefer some protection from a bank-like institution to help keep their money safe for some modest fee - kind of like online wallets - or the idealized version of the current banking system from old hollywood films.