<p>A blockchain is composed of many blocks. The bitcoin blockchain has 660,000+ blocks currently. Bitcoin blocks are limited by the Bitcoin rules to be at most 4KWU (kilo weight units). This is equivalent to 1MB of data per block, however, thanks to the Segwit upgrade, additional information can be stored in each block, making the maximum possible data per block be 4MB. The average block contains ~1.3MB of data.</p>
<p>The blockchain itself keeps growing as more and more blocks are added to it, so yes, storage requirements are rising 1.3MB / 10 minutes. Currently, a computer which stores the entire blockchain (all blocks) plus extra metadata and other indexes, takes up around 330GB - 400 GB.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-01-05T21:20:07.917Z
2021-01-05T21:20:07.917Z
Sachin Meier
<p>I was looking for a blockchain exchange but I didn't see so I am posting this in Bitcoin group. Apologize if it's too naïve.</p>
<p>I've started to learn about bitcoin and blockchains. I don't understand how the whole network transactions can be assembled into blocks and then all these blocks validated and broadcast. Is that efficient? It's basically a block that grows in size every second. How this large data is going to be processed, stored and broadcasted efficiently? I am sure I'm missing something as this is obvious.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-01-05T09:04:26.927Z
Nobody tall us that Bitcoin or blockchain was designed or better Bitcoin or blockchain are be designed to be efficient, but it is here to be secure. The size grows very fast, and you can look at it [here](https://www.blockchain.com/charts/blocks-size). In conclusion, to answer the question of how the data are compact inside the block, you can look to this [documentation page](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_documentation#block) that describe the Bitcoin data structure.
vincenzopalazzo
<blockchain>
how large a block can grow?
doubleE
# how large a block can grow?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-01-05)

I was looking for a blockchain exchange but I didn't see so I am posting this in Bitcoin group. Apologize if it's too naïve.

I've started to learn about bitcoin and blockchains. I don't understand how the whole network transactions can be assembled into blocks and then all these blocks validated and broadcast. Is that efficient? It's basically a block that grows in size every second. How this large data is going to be processed, stored and broadcasted efficiently? I am sure I'm missing something as this is obvious.

**Tags:** blockchain

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Nobody tall us that Bitcoin or blockchain was designed or better Bitcoin or blockchain are be designed to be efficient, but it is here to be secure. The size grows very fast, and you can look at it [here](https://www.blockchain.com/charts/blocks-size). In conclusion, to answer the question of how the data are compact inside the block, you can look to this [documentation page](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_documentation#block) that describe the Bitcoin data structure.  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2021-01-05. Score: 2

A blockchain is composed of many blocks. The bitcoin blockchain has 660,000+ blocks currently. Bitcoin blocks are limited by the Bitcoin rules to be at most 4KWU (kilo weight units). This is equivalent to 1MB of data per block, however, thanks to the Segwit upgrade, additional information can be stored in each block, making the maximum possible data per block be 4MB. The average block contains ~1.3MB of data.

The blockchain itself keeps growing as more and more blocks are added to it, so yes, storage requirements are rising 1.3MB / 10 minutes. Currently, a computer which stores the entire blockchain (all blocks) plus extra metadata and other indexes, takes up around 330GB - 400 GB.


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