How fast is Ethereum blockchain growing and how big is it likely to get in the future? Is it still about 1 GB per month? Are there any data pruning or compression algorithms in place or planned to be used?
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2And on pruning.– q9fCommented Feb 2, 2016 at 1:14
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1Fun fact - as of Oct 2022, Ethereum smart contracts have risen from 0 smart contracts in 2015 to a high of 44,023 smart contracts during the 2018 bull market, to All-Time-Highs in 2022 with 117,922 smart contracts, a 50% increase since 2021. So basically, the # of blocks are increasing and at a faster and faster rate. (source: alchemy.com/blog/web3-developer-report-q3-2022)– A. GuptaCommented Oct 20, 2022 at 20:51
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8 Answers
Update on Dec 9th, 2018 / Block ~ 6_850_000 - It's quite an annoyance to keep this answer updated.
Geth (Go)
Last Update: May 14th, 2018 / Block ~ 5_600_000
Client / Mode | Block Number | Disk Space
======================|================|===========
geth light | 5_600_000 | 363M
geth fast full | 5_600_000 | 142G
geth full full | ?_???_??? [1] | 239G + [1]
geth full archive | 4_980_000 [2] | 671G
[1]My disk was full, I didn't expect this to run out of space and wasn't able to repeat this sync mode[2]I didn't manage to sync the archive node within six weeks, unfortunately fully.- Geth 1.8.3
- Ubuntu 16.4 LTS, VPS instance with SSD backed storage
Parity (Rust)
Last Update: May 14th, 2018 / Block ~ 5_600_000
Client / Mode | Block Number | Disk Space
======================|================|===========
parity light | 5_600_000 | 89M
parity warp fast | 5_600_000 | 82G
parity full fast | 5_600_000 | 78G
parity full archive | 5_600_000 | 1.1T
- Parity 1.10.0
- Ubuntu 16.4 LTS, VPS instance with SSD backed storage
Update: Nov 29th, 2017. Afri has written a blog post about this, esp. parity pruning modes: The Ethereum-blockchain size will not exceed 1TB anytime soon.
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2If ethereum gets used as much as bitcoin is today (around 5tx/sec), that 28x the growth rate. Assuming people use more smart contracts and don't just speculate like they do with Bitcoin, you will see lots of smaller transactions. There will be some consolidation as more transactions are mined in a block (which uses a bit fewer bytes per transaction), but overall, I would expect 600gb-1TB per year of block chain growth if Ethereum gets popular. Commented Feb 2, 2016 at 18:04
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1@5chdn Assuming these figures are still correct, if I were to set up a new wallet and did my first sync using geth -fast, the bandwidth I would use for that first sync would be around 4.348GB ??? Is that right? Commented Nov 22, 2016 at 23:14
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1@alper one is a full node (pruned historical states) and the other one is an archive node (all historical states), see dev.to/5chdn/…– q9fCommented Aug 6, 2019 at 9:28
Currently, the network is growing at around 1GB per month. It's hard to anticipate how large it could grow and at what pace, but there are already efforts underway to implement state-tree pruning in various clients. These techniques will contribute towards so-called "light-clients".
In linked chart above, Block size evolution estimating block size in bytes over time that can be used to estimate velocity (rate). The most appropriate graph depends on what you mean specifically by block growth rate.
answered Jan 21, 2016 at 1:46
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2which one (or combination?) of the charts linked above shows the block growth rate? None of the individual charts seems to show this directly.– zanzuCommented Feb 18, 2016 at 17:03
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"Block size evolution" will be an estimate of block size in bytes over time that can be used to estimate velocity (rate). The most appropriate graph depends on what you mean specifically by "block growth rate" Commented Feb 18, 2016 at 17:09
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1I tried to find a definition of what etherchain.org means by "block size evolution", but I failed to find any. My interpretation (possibly wrong) is that this represents size of individual blocks averaged on a daily basis. To translate this to an estimate of the blockchain size growth rate over a month (which is what I meant to write in my previous message), we'd need to multiply this by the number of blocks added in a month.– zanzuCommented Feb 18, 2016 at 17:18
As of 11/01/2016, ethereum blockchain (ETH, i.e. supporting DAO fork) downloaded in full mode occupies 75GB on my drive. Client is geth (go-ethereum), version 1.4.18, built from source cloned from https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum, running on CentOS Linux release 7.2.1511.
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As of today should be, as of mm/dd/yyyy for each and every answer... Commented May 3, 2018 at 20:39
I've stumbled upon the links bellow :
1- provides an online chart which presents the Ethereum's blockchain current size evolution alongside the Bitcoin blockchain's size.
2- provides details about the Ethereum network including the blockchain size https://bitinfocharts.com/ethereum/
answered Jun 17, 2017 at 13:34
Benchmarks done on Homestead in june 2016
Geth 1.4.9 on i7 3720QM 16GB ram and SSD
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| - | Full | Fast | Light |
|-----------|--------|--------|---------|
| Disk | 22GB | 4.8GB | 600 Mo |
| Time | 5h | 21m | 21m |
-----------------------------------------
Parity 1.2 on i7 3720QM 16GB ram and SSD
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| - | Archive | Fast | Light |
|-----------|----------|--------|---------|
| Disk | 22GB | 3.7GB | 2.5GB |
| Time | 2h | 1h30 | 2h |
-------------------------------------------
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1I wonder why my results disk space needs from one month ago are higher than yours now...– q9fCommented Jul 1, 2016 at 9:04
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As of February 1, the blockchain size is ~940k blocks, with a new block being created every 17.2 seconds. This means, on average, the blockchain increases by 152,790 blocks every month.
A rough average block size, at this time, is around 1,225 bytes. With this average block size, the blockchain size increase is 187MB per month (152,790 blocks x 1,225 bytes).
Reference used: https://www.etherscan.io
I'm syncing a node in full mode. At the moment it' on block 5005306 (end of January 2018) and it is 700Gb. It's probably been running for more than 20 days
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Did you use geth or parity. If geth did you use
--gcmode=archiveoption? Commented Mar 4, 2018 at 18:02 -
geth with the syncmode=full option. I did not use the gcmode option. I dindt even know what it was before your commet. It seems something new on geth 1.8? Im using 1.7– DiegoCommented Mar 4, 2018 at 20:20
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Yes in Geth 1.8 there is automatic pruning enabled by default. gcmode=archive disables it. Commented Mar 4, 2018 at 20:35
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am I correct in assuming that's new to 1.8? because on 1.7 sync mode full is enough to avoid prunning– DiegoCommented Mar 4, 2018 at 22:00
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2023 update.
You can now use chainstats, a page made by Chainstack, a blockchain infrastructure provider (full disclosure, I'm a dev advocate at Chainstack and worked on this page).
This app displays the current size of all the public network Chainstack support based on the Protocol, node type (full or archive), and blockchain client.
It is automatically updated when the size changes in the resources required by the servers.
answered Jun 8, 2023 at 12:11
