Pre-proposal: Blockchain on a SD card service

[priestc]

Here is how this service will work: If you want to run your own full node, but don't want to wait for the 8GB blockchain to download, you can:

1. Visit the "dash on an SD card" website
2. Fill out a form, requesting an SD card to be mailed to you that contains the entire dash blockchain stored on the drive.
3. Optionally if you have your own SD card or USB drive that you would like to use instead of purchasing a new SD card, you have that option as well.

The cost to use this service is very cheap to the end user. If you want a new SD card, the price will be cost for the service to obtain the SD card plus a very tiny markup of just a few dollars. If you are providing your own media, the cost will be a few dollars.

The reason why the service can be offered to cheaply is because it is subsidized by the Dash treasury. The operators of this service draw a tiny token salary per month to keep the service alive.

All "sales" of dash blockchain SD cards will be conducted on addresses derived from a single "extended pubkey" that will be published in the official dash proposal. This will allow master node owners, as well as everyone else in the general public to see exactly how many sales the service has performed.

Once the service has been established, some next steps include:

1. Coming up with some kind of tamper proof packaging, sort of like what the trezor uses. This was you can be sure the SD card has not been tampered with by the post office of your country.

2. Custom packaging. Instead of getting a disk in the mail with the "SanDisk" logo on the sticker, the sticker could have the Dash logo and the number of blocks the blockchain contents within have been synced up to.

3. Immutable storage for initial blockchain data. I'm not even sure this is even possible, as I am not an expert on SD card manufacturer, but it would be a cool idea if the initial blockchain data was written to the SD card in such a way that makes it impossible for another computer to change the data (but data can still be appended onto what already there). This would increase the security of the card (at least for blocks mined before the data printed on the card) even after it has been taken from it's tamper proof packaging.

4. Remailer service. Some countries may ban Dash (for instance Venezuela). If they ban the currency they may also ban the SD card service. To get around this, the remailer service allows Dash blockchain to be mailed from multiple addresses. It works like this: The SD card service will send your SD card to a remailer, and then that remailer sends the disk to the final address. SD cards are really lightweight, so remailing is feasible. A hostile governmant can't hardly ban mail if it is coming from multiple directions.

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Version one of this service will be for a single 32GB sd card. The going price for cheap name brand 32 MB cards is about $13. To get one shipped to you, it'll be $15.

source:

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_...c-rank&ie=UTF8&qid=1492992436&rnid=2470954011

Once the service has been established, it can offer options to get your blockchain data sent to you on a drive bigger than 32GB (for a higher price). Eventually, if Dash is to be successful, the size of the blockchain will grow to the point where 32GB won't be enough, so that option will eventually be removed, and the price to get a disk with the dash blockchain on it may increase, but still only to over cost of the medium and a very tiny markup.

 

[Technologov]

I will vote 'NO' for Dash budget.

IMO it will not work. 256 GB is easy to download anyway, at least for most countries.
And once blockchain will grow to multi-terabyte size, SD cards will no longer be feasible. Hard Disks will be required. You are free to build such a start-up from your own money, tough.

 

[priestc]

I will vote 'NO' for Dash budget.

IMO it will not work. 256 GB is easy to download anyway, at least for most countries.
And once blockchain will grow to multi-terabyte size, SD cards will no longer be feasible. Hard Disks will be required. You are free to build such a start-up from your own money, tough.

Possible, yes, but not easy. Some business will sneer at not being able to use their dash wallet until a multi-day download has to complete. It's much more attractive to just send off for a disk to come in the mail, then plug it in and you are ready to go. Dash has to compete with other coins, if Dash is the easiest to get running, then it has an advantage over the competition.

The biggest SD cards on the market today are 512GB, which is enough to hold the Dash blockchain for the next decade (or more). A decade from not either SD cards will have gotten better and can hold more data, or another medium has taken its place and it cheaper anyways.

Basically the idea of this proposal comes from a similar program Ubuntu had back in the early 2000s. You could give your address to a webpage on ubuntu.com, and they would send you a free CD with the current Ubuntu version. This was back when CD's were cheap as heck to produce. Yeah everyone could download ubuntu for free, but having it on a CD meant you didn't have to wait all day for the download to complete and made for a better user experience.

 

[Dashmaximalist]

sounds like reasonably good idea , but one thing i fail to understand is this , why would some one need full node anyway ? how big is this audience ?

 

[Vedran Yoweri]

Perfect way to drop wallet stealing malware.

 

[priestc]

sounds like reasonably good idea , but one thing i fail to understand is this , why would some one need full node anyway ? how big is this audience ?

It will be a very tiny market at first. Since the blockchan is only 3 GB in size today, there is not much need today for such a service. The service will take off once the amount of time it takes to download the entire blockchain takes as long as it takes to send an SD card through the mail. On average it takes 4 or 5 days for an SD card to arrive in the mail, when it takes 4 or 5 days to download the entire blockchain, then this service will become more relevant.

Full nodes are needed for decentralization. If running a node is as easy as putting an SD card into you computer then clicking an icon, then there will be more full nodes. Bitcoin is having problems today because they think if it's harder to run a full node, then the currency becmes less "good". If dash has a working and reliable SD card service, then these concerns will not exist when it comes time for dash to raise it's blocksize.

Perfect way to drop wallet stealing malware.

This is why such an endeavor is funded b the masternode network. If it was operated by some random person, then you can't trust that the SD card was made without malware. If the endeavor is funded by the masternode network, then you know that there is some oversight, and if malware ever got into one of the SD cards, the masternodes will pull funding. Treasury funding also ensures that the operator of this service doesn't have to worry about making a profit, which will keep the disks from being overran with adware and stuff that a service operator worrying about profit will inevitably have to resort to.

Here is a mockup I made in gimp:

 

[Vedran Yoweri]

Perfect way to drop wallet stealing malware.

This is why such an endeavor is funded b the masternode network.

This is why I'll never vote for this. The potential disastrous consequences for Dash are real, it could kill Dash. If I want to take down a coin this is one of the tricks i would use.
Its not needed, blockchain is very small and disappears for end users, because evolution. Until then there's Jaxx and others.

 

[TroyDASH]

No - this is not necessary currently and will be completely obsolete with dash evolution.

 

[Dashmaximalist]

Dash has very strong master node network system and it will keep getting stronger so for near future we don't need it