Author: Luke-Jr 2013-06-06 20:07:38
Published on: 2013-06-06T20:07:38+00:00
In this discussion, Andreas M. Antonopoulos raises the question of whether Bitcoin can operate as a platform for other services if it is neutral to payload, as long as the fee is paid for transaction size. However, the cost to store data in the blockchain is much higher than most storage solutions, and only miners receive the fees, not the majority of nodes. The fee system is set up as an antispam/deterrent, not as payment for storage. Unlike email, users are not forced to store/relay video/voice/images without reimbursement. Any full Bitcoin node is required to at least download the entire blockchain once, and the network suffers if nodes decide not to store parts of the blockchain they don't want to deal with. This is where merged mining comes into play, solving the problem by linking the bitcoin blockchain up with unlimited other data through a single extra hash in the coinbase. People running nodes have all implicitly agreed to store blocks for financial purposes, and storing data is a violation of that social contract.
Updated on: 2023-06-06T18:24:01.979063+00:00