Proponents of Bitcoin and Ethereum have always had different views on nodes and the properties of their respective blockchains. However, report BitMEX Research’s thoughtfulness could end the controversy.

It’s worth noting that they noticed that the Bitcoin blockchain is still bigger than the Ethereum blockchain. However, this is about to change. BitMEX Research also concluded that size is not a suitable metric to compare two chains because “to get useful information about the Ethereum network, more calculations have to be done and more data has to be generated”.

The reason people think Ethereum is bigger than Bitcoin, says BitMEX Research, is because they “don’t remember how small Ethereum was a few years ago”.

“From 2015 to 2018 the BTC blockchain grew faster than Ethereum, then from 2018 to 2020 they seem to grow at the same time. After all, the growth rate of Ethereum will be faster from the end of 2020 and the growth rate is now much higher than that of Bitcoin. The cumulative blockchain size of Ethereum will soon surpass and even quickly surpass that of Bitcoin. “

BTC and Ethereum blockchain size | Source: BitMEX Research

“In both cases for Bitcoin and Ethereum, the total blockchain size in the table above contains all transaction data, i.e. all data that must be downloaded for full synchronization and chain verification. The data also contain all digital signatures that enable transactions. “

Bitcoin blockchain research

follow tweet by Peter Szilagyi, Ethereum’s pre-block states (blocks that precede new blocks that need to be validated) require 130 GB of data. With Bitcoin, we can compare it to “the UTXO set size, the rate of unspent Bitcoin spending”. UTXO requires 4.6 GB, “that’s only about 1.2% of the size of the entire Bitcoin blockchain”. With Ethereum, the story is very different. That 130 GB is “about 43% of that blockchain size, much more than 1.2% for Bitcoin”.

In addition, the study emphasizes the following:

“BTC Core supports the blockchain reduction, ie a node can discard the old blockchain data and only keep a few very tight transactions plus the UTXO set. It is therefore possible to validate the entire Bitcoin blockchain and check the validity of new blocks with less than 10 GB of hard disk space. “

Research on the Ethereum blockchain

Note that both blockchains are quite different and the study only compares the basics. For example, in Ethereum, a node stores two types of databases: blockchain and state. “The state is calculated from the transaction history and essentially includes: all account balances on Ethereum, the storage associated with every smart contract provided on Ethereum, and nonce numbers. Which blockchain miners settle accounts ”.

Currently, the state is as heavy as blockchain. “Therefore, by reducing the previous block state, only a limited or efficient reduction can be achieved. Therefore, the previous block state can evolve over time. “

After careful analysis, BitMEX Research came to the following conclusion:

“There is not always significant relevance when comparing the blockchain sizes of Ethereum and BTC. The BTC blockchain is almost enough to learn everything about the BTC network. In contrast, the Ethereum blockchain itself cannot say much about the state of Ethereum. This requires more computing power and data storage. Otherwise it is impossible to know what many transactions actually do. “

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