mmutability is a buzzword thrown around a lot in the cryptocurrency community. It means that the record of cryptocurrency and blockchains cannot be changed.

However, there is a practical problem posed by storing entire blockchains - They just keep getting bigger, and this is a big problem if they are to be accessed and added to by clients with limited storage, for which cases the introduction of trusted third parties, be they online wallets or servers that act as mediators, trusted to keep this permanent record.

Trusted third parties dilute the security and availability of blockchain systems, decreasing the possible points of failure and increasing the chance of successful poisoning of the network with false information.

How can a Blockchain reduce its storage footprint adaptively while remaining secure?

Ultimately while propagation of transactions within a blockchain remains pretty much random, individual nodes must have it all available to verify transactions.

This results in a baseline transaction processing capacity which has been improved with Steem via the unique difficulty adjustment scheme and enforced time synchronisation and the assignment of 21 nodes who take turns in producing blocks.

Bitcoin and most other blockchains randomly discover blocks with an average rate that can move by many standard deviations from the median line (also affected by short term changes of hash power on the network).

But then we are still stuck with a ceiling on maximum transactions, and no mechanism to adjust headroom any further. The improvements made by synchronising the network allow over 1000 transactions per second.

But if transaction volume hits this limit, there will be a lot of transaction timeouts, which will simply be dropped rather than allow any further congestion.

It would be pretty annoying.

But we want this! The problem is the result would be even a bigger problem with the rate at which the blockchain grows.

So we have two problems to solve:

1. How to allow more transactions in time

and

1. How to handle the storage provision required for this

I have some ideas about how to solve this problem such that it does not appreciably debase all the benefits of the blockchain.

Solutions

Divide the Storage

This one is very difficult to envisage. How do you prune the load on a node correctly?

Genesis Blocks

Well, firstly, there are entries in the database that are first instances, and attached to them are further nodes like spends, invalidation of a token and issuing change tokens.

Terminal nodes (leaves)

These form a branching tree, and only terminals are necessary for verifying a new transaction on it. So there will be some growth in this growing edge, but far less than the growth in transactions as each user node can produce especially considering the optimal outcome where the technology is ubiquitous.

Make a rental fee to the network based on account traffic volumes

Steem also brings to focus a concept also, that accounts are a debt, and spam is prevented by a network enforced transaction rate limit. In both network traffic and storage space, accounts have a net cost. But this is mitigated by the rewarding of holding assets in Steem Power, which works to deflate the currency.

Leaf Caches

The idea would be that light nodes could maintain storage of only the latest (terminal) transaction on a branch of the tree, is kept. But how do we ensure we can trust this abbreviated record?

Specialising in a Limited Segment

And if we can get away with it, randomly divide, preferably somewhat graded by latency, some more of the data and enable other nodes to preferentially distribute it?

What I am suggesting is a secondary tier of nodes that allow the same benefit as from the round robin witnesses, but with a graduated rate of pay, that reflects the volume of transactions handled.

Ensuring Data Consistency

Filtering Broadcast Destinations

To prevent these smaller nodes from forwarding bogus data to the network, they have to be tested. Each light node broadcasts a black or whitelist (whichever is smaller) of User objects it stores and processes transactions for, or even just provides a ready cache for peers who have missing pieces.

Ensuring Veracity with Partial Stores and a Test System

The simple way to test this is "test transactions". The results are broadcast as a rotating buffer with proof of result in the packet, and some nodes can act as aggregators of this data and certify each other's tables and maintain a reputation score that can be trusted.

The Manifold Benefits of Scaling Service Levels

This way nodes that do not store everything, still can help, but on the other side, here can be a fluid, performance regulated subdivision of the network that changes over time as various sized nodes form smaller but partially connected subnets that don't have to have the whole network involved immediately with transactions but enough for security and a gradual convergence for a much smaller number of nodes required to ensure veracity with full blockchains.

Or in less words, a fractally scaling parallelisation system that increases performance and connectivity of the network, while also improving data security and availability by allowing a relaxation of bandwidth, processing and storage minimums.

Conclusion

The scaling of the network is a pressing problem of success of a blockchain, not right now, but increasingly. Transaction rates and storage capacity rise together in a compounding fashion. The problem, once it emerges, will be very unhelpful when it occurs as it is being attempted to get wide adoption.

We are at a point where blockchains represent the solutions to so many problems, though still yet largely unrecognised, and muddied with what is especially relevant to Steem, as a journalism platform is built in, the pall of possible government interventions into social networks and making them into weapons of psychological warfare.

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We can't stop here! This is Whale country!

_{Loki was born in Australia, now is wandering Amsterdam again after 9 months in Sofia, Bulgaria. IT generalist, physics theorist, futurist and cyber-agorist.}

_{Loki's life mission is to establish a secure, distributed layer atop the internet, and enable space migration, preferably while living in a beautiful mountain house somewhere with a good woman, and lots of farm animals and gardens, where he can also go hunting and camping.}

<sub>"I'm a thoughtocaster, a conundrummer in a band called Life Puzzler. I've flipped more lids than a monkey in a soup kitchen, of the mind."
- Xavier, Renegade Angel</sub>

_{All images in the above post are either original from me, or taken from Google Image Search, filtered for the right of reuse and modification, and either hotlinked directly, or altered by me}