RE: Blockchain and Networking

["Naslund, Steve" <SNaslund () medline com>]

Sure but there are lots of blockchains other than bitcoin.  A lot of real smart people do not even suspect that bitcoin 
is a long term survivor due to its long transaction times.  Which blockchains do you want to support?  150GB may not 
seem like a lot (although a lot of my gear does not have the memory to cache that) but 10 of those is beyond the memory 
on the vast majority of network gear I am aware of.  That sure looks like a slippery slope to me.   Now that a lot of 
network switching and routers can support applications, you could just host all of your apps on them just like you 
could do all of your routing in your servers.   The question for you is what responsibilities do you want to take on.   
That probably depends on what business you are in.

> There is absolutely no reason that the networking equipment itself can't both operate the blockchain and keep a full 
> copy.  It's a pretty good bet that your own routers will probably be online;  if not, you have bigger problems.
>
> The storage requirements aren't particularly onerous.  The entire Bitcoin blockchain is around 150GB, with several 
> orders of magnitude more transactions (read: config changes) than you're likely to see even on a very large network.  
> SSDs are small >enough and reliable enough now that the physical space requirements are quite small.

Steven Naslund
Chicago IL