Peter R said: @awemany : I was travelling all last week and didn't have time to comment, but I wanted to mention that I really liked your work trying to quantify the cost of writing transactions to the Blockchain. It didn't get the attention it deserved on Reddit, but I think it could with the right presentation. I hope you continue to develop these ideas! Click to expand...





On that note, we were talking about a related idea in the old gold thread about how it is actually cheaper for the network to write a backlog of spam to the network than to reject it: Click to expand...

Thank you! But as you can see it is really an almost trivial calculation. That said, it can be extended a little (for example, include (repeated) IBD cost, loss of HDDs, cost of online vs. offline storage). I sincerely doubt one will arrive at realistic figures that are more than a magnitude higher.And with UTXO commitments, I can only see the cost to operate a full node falling.In any case, I would expect something like this to be the starting point informing a productive discussion about needed decentralization and node cost.In a discussion on reddit, I told gmax that I'd be fine with a 1000 full nodes scattered worldwide, I consider this enough decentralization also in the end game.He explicitly said that this is a Bitcoin he doesn't want to work for (so basically indirectly admitting that he's steering it off-course right now). At least a negative data point. But it should be easy for him to state his needed level of decentralization.It is a gaping hole in their whole argument - concrete, realistic numbers.I am also pretty sure that Gavin is not going to be too far off with BIP101 - whilst ensuring exactly what BS supposedly wants: Let simple people be able to run full nodes still.Yes, I saw that back then on the original thread, but thanks for reminding me. This is indeed a calculation that is very similar.[doublepost=1449394672][/doublepost] @Zarathustra Another data point. A thousand full nodes worldwide is not enough for him.