Last week I again thought of the Steemit plan of taking over the world with a blockchain. There is a problem I keep coming back to since I made a post about this "evil plan" related to the UBI idea Dan proposed.

The Problem

There is a problem of the size of one singular database being updated throughout a network of distributed nodes. 1) Imagine if the world was simply on one singular blockchain, how unmanageable that would be? 1 million terrabytes, or more? That is not a feasible future.

Also, 2) text alone adds up to make a large database to deal with over time, but when we start adding images, and video data hosted in a distrusted manner, it will take more space.

Lastly, 3) think of the old-data "dust-bin" factor of information. We see it in how Steemit is structured for payouts, the old content disappears from visibility to be lost for google searches to find. This applies to data in general so it's no surprise Steemit has the same function. Old data is hardly used, it doesn't need to be in a blockchain, updated and propagated all the time.

Idea

It should be obvious we need to have many blockchains (not just one), and subchains, linked in a network, and networks of networks, where certain nodes host certain types of content or data. This way, whatever is popular would be hosted by more nodes as it requires more frequent transactional upkeep to fulfill the request of users for that type of data. In addition, each type of blockchain would have an area border network of nodes that act as a link between different blockchain areas, like OSPF works in networking to add a link between each and making the sharing of data more manageable.

For example, banking or money transactions would have a certain frequency and number of nodes for uptime and reliability. Maybe this would be the blockchain with the most nodes on the planet, with subchains as well for certain sectors.

Another sector of data for a blockchain would be images. Even different categories of images could have their own blockchain, because not all content is as valued. Funny pictures might be more popular than photography of events in the news, or art, or vice versa.

Video, and it's size, could be hosted on nodes, and have it's quantity of nodes and it's quality and reliability based on it's own blockchain sustainability. Again, there can be different blockchains for different types of videos too.

For Steemit, as an early example of applying these subchains, is to apply it to the most popular categories that take up the most data storage. For example, when/if images are hosted on the blockchain, this will greatly add to the load. This would need to be done on a separate blockchain to fetch data when required. The nodes for the text based blockchain would be manageable, and the image blockchain demands would increase first and could be managed separately.

This can not only apply to specific media type, like text, images, video, audio, but also to specific content type like blogs, photography, art, sports, news, etc. These would also be managed in terms of popularity to host a certain number of nodes for reliability and quality. This way, if some category is less popular, then less nodes are requires to host it, and more nodes can be used to host other types of content that has a more heavy used of traffic or transactions.

This way, people who host nodes, can choose to host nodes of data they want to choose, that they want to take pride in maintaining uptime, and reliable data delivery. If I would be hosting blockchains, and I was the upkeeper to ensure data integrity, I would want to do it for somethingI cared about, more than I would want to do it for something I didn't care about or detested. This greater freedom will have blockchain node hosts care even more about their hardware and upkeep.

So I left this alone last week and went back to my site, other projects, and posts to do. Until yesterday when @dantheman made his post, and @l0ki this morning. I wanted to chime in on what I had come up with as well in support of these new posts. L0k1 has added an insight to my original idea I came up with, that he also came up with. I will give credit where it is duly deserved :) The idea of subchains, though used in another manner for another reason, was introduced in steemspeak weeks earlier. I came up with this use and reason through my own thinking.

@dantheman and @l0k1's input

A better way of managing the data can be developed. I have come up with some ideas, and Dan yesterday made a post about some future announcement Steemit will make on helping increase the transaction amount on the Steem blockchain:

"This week our team has come up with a design and roadmap for scaling Steem to the speeds required to handle as many users and transactions as your all can throw at us. We are in the process of documenting our design and producing a roadmap for its development and deployment."

And this morning, l0k1 made a post on distributing the latency of the blockchain, which shares my idea, and adds an additional aspect I had not though of regarding popularity:

"Trusted Caching Nodes (that you are running or frequently using) keep up to date but they inform other nodes whuch nodes of the database they are interested in most frequently, as related to the queries they get. ... Synchronising data to nodes clients are not requesting of makes no sense, this synchronisation should prioritise traffic to fit utilisation."

l0k1 is right on target, it's pretty much what I was thinking, except he used more technical terminology. Please go read what he wrote as well. I will develop or add to l0k1's point.

Multi-Chain Matrix Blockchain Future

We are talking about a lot of data in the world. Many different types of blockchains, with subchains and more subchains, will be required to properly fragment and distribute the data in a manageable way. Interconnecting the most frequent and popular data is important.

The technology of blockchains can be further developed to incorporate what I decided to all multi-chain matrices. Instead of hosting a node for one chain that is large, you could host fragment of subchains that are most popular and have the most frequent transactions to improve the reliability of those popular blockchains. This is similar to what @l0k1 is saying about "cached nodes".

As he says, it's demand based. Which is what I had thought of when I was saying to make the blockchains separated based on content types and media type and having a quantity of nodes for each based on their popularity or frequency of use. Node hosts can choose what data they want to host and maintain reliability.

We can host nodes which have the most demand and value to certain parts of the Steemit community, or eventually, to the whole internet community at large. And we can also choose to host nodes that we value the most, even if others don't. We can act as guardians, upholders and upkeepers of knowledge. I see this as the future of the blockchain technology. I just need to learn to code it and develop it... hahah!

What do you think?