Gaming mogul Tim Sweeney, best known these days for founding the company behind , made the unusual decision to defend the size of the in a tweet today.
What’s wrong with 4TB for a global transaction ? That fits on a $200 hard drive.
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic)
Crypto Blockchain Size: How Big Is Too Big?
Weekly created a video expressing concern over the current size of the . Sweeney wondered what the big problem with a 4TB is.
How did the greatest strength of (its speed) turn into its greatest vulnerability?
For the answer, follow the white rabbit:
— Weekly (@EOSWeekly)
Of course, the size of blocks and bloat is a serious issue in the community. The currently clocks in at over 200GB. Concerns over centralization fueled a years-long debate about the raising of the standard block size limit in . The debate eventually led to the creation of .
After some explanation, the Fortnite billionaire still didn’t understand the problem.
So nodes have to buy a new $300 8TB hard drive every 16 months? Why is this a problem? Usenet was growing 1TB/day more than a decade ago…
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic)
It’s unsurprising that a video game developer would have no concerns about the size of a codebase. Updates for many games on platforms like Xbox One can be upwards of 50GB, taking hours to download. Millions of files and lines of code go into every aspect of a modern video game.
But the concern about the size of the is less related directly to its size and more related to the nature of . Just a handful of block producers the entire history of the , making them crucial to the network’s operation. If it were , the network would be virtually unusable with that few nodes running.
Video Claims Full EOS Nodes Began Falling Off With Rocketing Size
The video explains in detail why the lack of “history nodes” presents a problem for . He explains that in November, the grew to 1 and then 2 terabytes.
When the chain started hitting this size range, a good portion of the [Block Producers] started pulling out. They had to stop offering full history. It was just becoming too technically burdensome and expensive to keep it going.
One user pointed out that the “4TB” estimate might be inaccurate.
1) I believe the original article was erroneous with stating 4TB in 8 months.
2) It’s a problem because it’s ultimately leads towards node ops becoming “more centralized” in the future – Ideally, the barrier-to-entry for running a full, validating node, should be low.— 𝙲𝚑𝚛𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚊𝚗 𝙰𝚗𝚝𝚔𝚘𝚠 (@CAntkow)
The video is referring to “full history” nodes, however. A regular block directory for was around
According to creator Dan Larimer, “full history” nodes .
Fortnite Store Accepts Crypto – By Mistake
Tim Sweeney’s interest in is passing at best. As we reported recently, the Fortnite was e. Additionally, Sweeney’s company hasn’t pursued potential plans to develop crypto-integrated products. They had investigated making a deal with a European company, but .
Still, that the recently minted billionaire is following information on Twitter is interesting. That he is interested in is even more interesting, as most mainstream developers have looked to when exploring the possibilities of smart contracts.
Will the next Epic game have an economy built on the , or some other interaction with it? Will that crypto network be ? Seems we’ll find out, but for now, don’t get your hopes up.
Tim Sweeney Image from Official GDC/Flickr
Published at Fri, 22 Feb 2019 20:06:04 +0000
