----- Forwarded message from rob.golding@astutium.com ----- Date: Sun, 08 Sep 2013 04:56:17 +0100 From: rob.golding@astutium.com To: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Blockchain archival User-Agent: Roundcube Webmail/0.8.5

(there's no way to be completely trust-free without this).

Not quite true, as I said balance-at-point-in-time would solve that (and make the storage requirements much lower)

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If going that route, then solutions to the 'consolidate addresses/wallets' question and formal 'discard' of addresses could get addressed.

Not sure what you mean here. Addresses and wallets are two completely different things. Addresses are single-use destinations that point to a wallet (which is itself private and unknown to the network).

For bitcoin to grow beyond interesting experiment into global everyday use a number of things would have to happen, not least of which is taking 'average punter' into account. Whilst new ideas can filter into the general consciousness over time,sometimes concepts have to go with 'what already works' :) People's concept of money hasn't really changed in over 1,000 years - it remains 'something of known value i can exchange for something else'. No-one outside of bitcoin dev's and early adopters really gets the one-shot concept of addresses - possibly rightly so - keeping issues of it lowering levels of anonymity etc out of the discussion - it doesn't fit with the mindset people have - it's difficult enough getting merchants to setup separate addresses for each client, one per transaction is simply a waste (of addresses, storage, blockchain size, numnber of inputs|outputs when spending etc) I'm sure the wife would love a new handbag everytime she gets some money, but the real-world just isnt like that ;) Addresses are perceived as the equivalent of a jar you stick your coins in. You can have lots of jars. Each jar can be for a specific reason or whatever, but the analogy is there. Wallets are like a box you keep some of your jars in. With the added interesting concept that a jar can be in multiple boxes at the same time. Only the person with the right 'key' can open the jar and take the contents. However unlike the 3 money boxes I have behind me right now - which i can take 1 single penny out of one and put it into another - if I want to move bitcoins from one addresses (jar) to another *of my own* I have to pay a fee. Worse still if the jar doesnt have much in it I'm denied that ability. End user will neither understand why or want to pay the fee, for dealing with their own coins. If a jar breaks I can just tip the contents into a new one - unless I'm very careless, the amount in the new one = the amount in the old one - people will want/need it to work like that. Similarly if you do have all these addresses around, you may want (as good housekeeping) discard some of them (after moving the cash). So having the ability to specify address to send from is essential (and a sadly missing feature of the QT client) 'intra-wallet' transfers with an 'also discard the sending address' would be a way of (once confirmed) stopping any further use of that address (denied any further transactions by miners ?) and when balance-at-point-in-time is implemented, a way of shrinking the storage for all other bitcoin users (who chosse not to have a full transaction set). If i send luke 10, and luke sends me back 3, i have 3, luke has 7. If luke sends me 2, and i send luke 1, i have 4 and luke has 6. To verify my ability to send jeff 4, all that is needed is to know that I have 4, not all the transactions that led to that state - thats how its done now, thats not necessarily efficient as bitcoin grows If luke sends me 4 more, i now have 4 again, luke has 3 If i send 1 to each of the children, they have 1 each (*4) Having a 'family' wallet means when on holiday they can have that rental of quad-bikes - to send the rental company 4 the client only needs to know that those addresses now have 1 each in them, not all the previous transactions - if they didnt exist at the point-in-time balance, then yes, it would need to know about the luke>rob>kids transactions, but thats all I moved to a new netbook recently - it took 140 *hours* to d/load and process the blockchain (yes the wifi was that bad), I heard from one of our clients that (although they only had the client running during working hours) that to their desktop it was over 9 days before it had caught up. If all I was d/loading were the transactions since the last difficulty change (as one example of a fixed point), and the remaining balance on any not-discarded address as at that point it would have been much much quicker, and not be shagging my shiny new hard drive. There's more but it's 4.45 in the morning, and I cant think coherently until after a few hours kip and some good coffee :) Rob ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Learn the latest--Visual Studio 2012, SharePoint 2013, SQL 2012, more! Discover the easy way to master current and previous Microsoft technologies and advance your career. Get an incredible 1,500+ hours of step-by-step tutorial videos with LearnDevNow. 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