I made 3 main questions in this post. You can see them there in more detail.
Since then, I've come up with a few more questions too.
I'll start with is there some reason images aren't included in the blockchain? I could imagine a process that reversibly compresses an image into a string of plain text. If I post such a text then an interface that's in the know could decode it to reveal the image. No need for external hosting, image links wont die, and it's all on the blockchain. Seems useful and interesting to me, and I wonder if there are any technical roadblocks to doing this.
My second new question is why not compress posts? As I understand it longer posts use more RC, and RC is a scarce resource. If posts could be significantly shortened by compression, smaller accounts could post more often. It also seems to me that more posts could be fit into a single block if they were smaller. I don't really know if block size is the same for every block or exactly how it works on the back end though. I could see an argument that it would obscure the public nature of it all somewhat, but it's just a matter of having the right decompression software.
My last new question is related to the previous two. How big is the blockchain these days, how fast does it grow, and is bloat on the Hive blockchain a problem at all? I know that's kind of a triple question but they're all intimately related. I could definitely use relative answers here too. Like is it bigger or smaller than the Bitcoin blockchain (I'd guess smaller). Does it grow faster, slower, or at the same rate?
If you don't know the answers to any of these questions, that's okay. At least some are opinion based and I'd be happy to hear your opinion.
Even if you're at a loss for both answers and opinion somehow, you can still help me find answers by re-blogging this post. Hopefully it'll fall under the eyes of someone with answers. Then you'll have still had an invaluable hand in helping me learn, dear reader.
