Could SAFE provide a better (faster) way for propagating Bitcoin blocks?

Random idea. Would it be faster than the current, built in, method?

One of the bottlenecks about blockchain stuff in general is the time it takes for new blocks to spread through the network. Due to the probabilistic nature of mining, sometimes multiple miners find a good hash for the same height within a short amount of time. The faster the network learns about a new block, the less time there is for disagreements (forks, we call them) about whose block is the winner.

There are mechanisms in the Bitcoin protocol to cut down on the amount of information that needs to be transmitted about new blocks. One, for example, is to only transmit transactions that the other node doesn’t know about yet. This seems to me something that can be done efficiently with the SAFE network.

Related, but not identical: SAFE will be a good distributed store for that bloated excuse for a data structure (i.e. the blockchain.) It won’t make Bitcoin scale all that better, but maybe a little.

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If safenet works as designed, you wouldn’t need a blockchain for transactions - the network has a completely different consensus model.

Where you do need a blockchain, to record a order of events, you could implement a native blockchain on safenet. There is a good thread here about the concept: Public Ledgers and Proof of Transparency on SAFE

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I posted this in the “other projects” category for a reason: I’m talking about helping out a friendly bunch of other-minded folks, not about how the SAFE network itself works.

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blockchain is inefficient, bloated, and wasteful energy. Surely, it is a great bookkeeper. But blockchain isn’t needed since we got structure data model. We can build our own bookkeeper and it’ll be a lot more efficient than what blockchain offers.

Sorry to break it with you. I am starting to dislike blockchain more and more every day. Even though it is still a great system to use…for now. I think safe will provide a much better system.

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Yes, all of those are interesting things to discuss, and I can’t even say I’m not with you on those arguments. However, I wasn’t talking about anything like that.

I was considering:

  1. bitcoin exists (obviously)
  2. it uses in-house methods to distribute its in-flight transaction pool
  3. it uses in-house methods to propagate new blocks across its in-house network of nodes

And then the great idea: The safe network may provide a better back-end for them than the in-house system that they currently use. Hence I used the “other projects” category for this post, though I must agree that in this case the other project wouldn’t be complementary to SAFE, but the other way around.

So again: I’m not arguing about whether a blockchain or a distributed ledger is better; as my post is concerned, that’s not a question.

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Hi Tim87,

I don’t remember where but someone did ask david about this and their response was that they want to wait till testing and actual launch of the project before saying what it can and can’t do in regards to hosting blockchains. To be frank my opinion is that if it works as expected - there is no reason why bicoin couldnot use safenet APIs and use it as the storage backend.

After all if safe can be configured to act like a drive/mount point - why wouldn’t it make better use for things like the blockchain as a backend. My concern is that safe does some sort of deduplication, makes me wonder if all the blockchain data wouldn’t end up being deduplicated to like 4 chucks for all their data.

Sweet! I wasn’t the first one to think about this.

About deduplication: we all wish it worked like that! HYPER_COMPRESSION: ON :heart_eyes_cat:

No, the blockchain will stay the monster it is, just stored in a different system. Deduplication only means that if you want to store the same data again, it won’t take up more space. So, even if 40,000 people are saving the same block, it will still only have 4 copies on the network.

Except, it’s more like 6 copies now (as I learned about it yesterday; now we have 2 extra “sacrificial blocks” as well) and the original plan was that popular blocks should be cached near where they are most requested.

This, on a global scale, would mean enormous storage savings, of course. That stupid data monster is stored by thousands of computers, fully redundant.

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You may want to read this topic which seems to be discussing your topic already

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I just read it. Actually, it’s discussing the topic I fleetingly mentioned at the end of my post (“related, but not identical: …”).

I was mostly interested in if the safe net can help with the transaction pool and block propagation issue. Faster block propagation allows for bigger blocks, and that means more transaction. If the transaction pool saturates the whole network, then everybody has access to all the transactions the moment a new block is announced, so they can immediately start to verify it. The question is whether there is a way to learn about the existence of a new block super super quickly.

As a side note, nothing can make Bitcoin scale “enough.” It can handle maybe 10,000x fewer transactions than it would be necessary to fulfill the dream of becoming an everyday currency for the masses. Which it never promised, but virtually everybody seems to think it did :joy_cat:

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I posted some on this subject some time ago. I do think it will slow down Safenet when it’s used for all blocks and transaction for Bitcoin. It will slow down both I think. But to store all blocks on Safenet might be an idea. On the other hand, say 20.000 nodes constantly requesting blocks from Safenet… don’t know.

Ethereum’s Vitalik replied to the idea some time ago on Reddit.