How big is the NKN blockchain?

Community
#1

How large is the NKN blockchain? Are the previous transactions stored on the nodes?

I am trying to understand the network architecture of NKN because it is stated that it can run on a raspberry pi PI and even on router firmwares, so how do these devices with limited storage capabilities store the transactions?

Or are there 2 different systems, a node that stores the transactions 'the blockchain" and the miners that relay their bandwidth and internet connection?

#2

First of all, in NKN system we have nodes and clients. Only Nodes need to store the blockchain data, carry out relay, and do mining. The Clients do not need to do any of that, they just use a simple SDK to send and receive data from NKN network. True IoT device, e.g. your thermostat, might just be a NKN client. While the Wi-Fi router or IoT home gateway, can be a NKN node.

Now for the full consensus nodes: at the moment, our v0.8 based testnet blockchain data is a bit over 3GB. This is accumulated since June’2018, a bit under a year. For home Wi-Fi router and Raspberry Pi, currently solution is using microSD cards or USB sticks. Both of these storage solutions are quite inexpensive (e.g. $20 for 128GB) and user installable.

We are working on a few things to reduce the local storage needs:

  1. Starting v0.9 Beluga and onto mainnet, we are using balance model instead of UTXO which will reduce the amount of transaction data stored on chain. This helps full consensus nodes.
  2. We plan to have “light” nodes which only need store the header of the blocks as well as caching only the latest blocks. There are mature mechanism to prune and caching blocks from other projects .
#3

I see so can I make my cell phone a client and share my bandwidth? or in order to participate in the mining I have to be a full node?

#4

For relaying traffic, your phone do need to run the full node software. I think memory and storage is not a problem on modern smartphones, but maybe battery is. On the other hand, the phone can be a client most of the time, and use Pub/Sub to announce to other users nearby that he is available for relay on demand. He only turns on full node mode, when someone is requesting relay service and willing to pay for it.

#5

I understand better now thank you for taking the time to explain it. I see a lot of potential on this type of network. I am not sure if the team is familiar with this company https://luminati.io/, but its a home IP proxy network. The bandwidth fees are high and theres like a minimum $500 spend. But the use cases are endless for ad networks, and online marketers.

I am thinking something similar can be built on NKN, where I install a proxy client on my PC or phone and then I can choose from available nodes by region / city / ISP I can connect too. So essentially I am browsing the internet using the nodes ISP and see what ads are being targeted in that region.

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