Crypto Mining Blog

The people that prefer to have full control over their Ethereum (ETH) addresses by running a local node with a full copy of the Ethereum blockchain could soon start having free space issues as the storage requirements continue to grow at a rapid rate. The Ethereum blockchain data is already getting close to 30GB in size and thanks to the Ethereum Classic (ETC) you may need to make a copy, so another 30GB of data for the ETC local wallet and blockchain. It may not be that big of an issue if you keep a single large blockchain on your computer, but people that use local crypto currency wallets usually have multiple of these and with the already huge Bitcoin (BTC) data getting close to 85GB in size as well as a few other more established older altcoins the free space required on your hard drive or let alone SSD if you use one can be over in no time…

It is not even a year since the mining of Ethereum’s Ether (ETH) coins has started and due to the short block time and the huge user interest the total size of the blockchain data of Ethereum has already grown huge and continues to grow rapidly. The current size of the Ethereum blockchain data files is already over 16 GB and just about two months ago it was a bit over 9 GB. With the increasing demands for storage to host the full blockchain data as a part of a local wallet or a full network node more users might be switching to online wallets and other services that do not require the user to have a local copy of the data files such as exchanges for example. With more users getting into Ethereum the number of transactions on the network is also growing and by the time when the switch from PoW to PoS phase happens we could even have Ethereum’s blockchain size getting close to that of Bitcoin. If you look only at ETH alone even 20 GB might not be that much, but if you have a local Bitcoin wallet as well as a few other crypto wallets installed on a PC with the full blockchain stored locally you might even start experiencing issues with available free space and things will only get worse with the fast increase of the size of the blockchain data.

With all the craziness surrounding the constantly growing price of Ethereum in the last weeks we also need to take a look at what is happening with the ETH blockchain in terms of file size. Taking a look at the total file size of Ethereum’s blockchain we can see that it is already approaching 9.5 GB in size, something that is a direct result of the fast block times and the growing user interest in ETH. When you consider the fact that Ethereum is still less than 1 year old crypto currency if you only take into account when the mining officially stated and not when the work on it has started. The big blockchain file size makes things harder on users that are just starting and want to run a full local node 24/7 or just wan to have a local wallet and with the increase in interest into Ethereum there are more and more new people joining. For the last month alone the number of unique Ethereum addresses on the blockchain has almost doubled than the number it was at the beginning of February. The number of transaction on the network is also steadily growing, but not as much as new users getting into Ethereum due to the rapid increase of the ETH price.