I've been doing some research into Bitcoin and the blockchain in general, and I've come upon a question that I can't find much of an answer to.
With my current understanding of the blockchain, I wonder if it would possible to create a "summary" block, and start the chain over? reducing its size while still maintaining continuity.
- The summary would have the hash of the last block in the old chain.
- For length calculation, it would be considered an extension of the old chain, and therefore its length calculated by adding its length to that of the old chain.
- I'm thinking that it would need to contain a summary of all accounts at the time of the summarization; essentially it would be the net of the old chain.
I found this question from five years ago, which helped a little bit.
This article states that the current size of the blockchain is over 100GB, and thats from 6 months back.
I'm just trying to learn, and this question has been bugging me for a little while. Is something like this possible?
20,000,000 * 300 = 6GB
, which is large, but a significant reduction. – Adam Schiavone Sep 6 '17 at 4:47