What is the memory every node allocates locally for the Bitcoin blockchain?

1

https://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size states that the current size of the Bitcoin blockchain is ~134,000MB. That is 127GB. Does that mean that every machine that is mining currently allocates 127GB+ for the blockchain?

McLeodx

Posted 2017-09-24T22:43:36.217

Reputation: 223

I think you meant 134,000MB instead of 131Mb. Lowercase b is bit, while uppercase B stands for byte.Murch 2017-09-25T04:16:58.657

Answers

2

Not all mining machines need to store the whole blockchain, as a miner you would normally have one or a few nodes which do that, and then just send a block template to all the actual mining machines (ASICs) to mine without caring about the blockchain.

All non-pruned full nodes store the entire blockchain. It's possible to run in pruned mode which means older blocks are pruned and only the newest ones are kept, so you need less space, but this means those nodes can't serve old blocks to new full nodes trying to sync

MeshCollider

Posted 2017-09-24T22:43:36.217

Reputation: 8 735