Since I’m no longer plotting I decided to point my 5900X towards compactifying the blockchain. I don’t know why but it’s fun and I enjoy watching Are we compactified yet? 
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This website is nice, thanks for sharing, I’ve been looking for a similar graph for a while now.
Can you share insights into how much your 5900x contributes to the effort?
It’s getting 60-80 blocks/hr.
1700ish blocks/day
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What is the cpu load/usage and what network up/down does a bluebox timelord cause?
I have a plotter that is no longer running (a couple actually). One is up for sale (not much interest). I was considering running a bluebox timelord. Not really sure if it is worth the electricity cost.
I (sort of) understand the purpose of a (bluebox) timelord, but why is it fun and why do you enjoy watching (what?). Do you earn XCH? … or fees? and what do you ‘watch’…some GUI or??? I will soon have an idle TR, and could (?) possibly become one (for fun? or better for profit). Any article that explains your rationale behind this urge to become one?
There is no financial gain from running a timelord. It is purely to contribute to the project. The fun part (for those of us that are weird) is to watch our contribution move the compactified number closer to being real-time (to where each block is being compactified as they are being created). To see the chart, he posted the link but here it is again.
I like this one better: Main Numbers
The same site, just different way of looking at it. Blue is the blockchain size and red is the percent of the blockchain that has been compactified (currently 43.5%).
The fact that once it is all caught up it will only take a couple systems to keep it caught up makes me think it’s not worth playing with it. But maybe I’ll change my mind.
But maybe someone can fill us in on what this actually is. Why are we compactifying it? What is the benefit and why is it behind? Is this a new thing? When I think of something that need compacting it is the database size. Does this have to do with that?
After asking the questions above, I thought I would do a little searching myself and found these two articles.
From what I understand, compactifying the blockchain will dramatically speed up the sync process for nodes. So when you setup a new node you don’t have to wait days and days for it to be online. Not sure if that is the only benefit, but that would be great if that is true.
I will probably spend some time later today setting up one. I like to contribute when I can.
Good info, thanks! But why can’t some giant whale type site, that has lots of high end compute available just compactify the whole freaking db and be done with it? Is compactification just allowed in bits at a time and cannot be done wholesale?
Some of us old timers lived through Seti@Home, BOINC, Folding@Home, etc… Lots of CPU work with no reward other than your PC was doing work. In this case, it helps the network as stated above.
I distinctly remember making a choice to use my CPU to run Folding@Home vs a weird internet money project called Bitcoin. Yeah, missed the mark on that one lol
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I just finished installing my Timelord.
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In such a case, why this is not a part of the main installation / workload. Assuming that you have 80 peers that are not doing it, it would be just 1 block / hr, if your peers would be also doing it.
Because it is energy intensive and isn’t absolutely necessary for the network to function I imagine.
Where is the data behind that? Any link that would explain what gains we are talking about?
The point I was trying to make is that if that is what all nodes would be doing, potentially just one block per day per node would be good enough. From the network point of view, efficiency would be the same.
Also, if that is “isn’t absolutely necessary,” it kind of implies that the sync speedup is rather negligible.
Nope, only the two links I provided. It mentions that it will speed up sync times. That is all I know. Would be interested in knowing more, just haven’t found anything. I’m sure the answer would be to join that Spacefarmer discord and go to the Timelords channel. Just not interested enough to spend the time.
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Yeah, I read that article, and commented there. There is no data, just adjectives, and exaggerations. My take is that the sync time has nothing to do with blockchain db size, but rather how it is handled by the node. Therefore, even assuming that the process will speed it up by 10-20%, that shaves little from the current ~40 hours required to sync.
Also, if the sync would be really node intensive, we would see those nodes choking during that process, and what we see is basically running idle.
I went ahead and joined the SpaceFarmers.io discord and posted the question in the timelords channel. My question was: “I’m trying to educate myself on the benefits of compacting the blockchain. Can someone point me in the direction of this information?”.
The only response so far is that it will reduce CPU usage to sync the blockchain.
I then went back through the channel and looked at past comments. One of them says that compacting the blocks will reduce the size of the database on your full node. The example given was from 32GB to 22GB.
I am not preaching this information as fact. I really don’t know. Like many others, I just want to understand the true benefit of compacting the blockchain. If anyone has links to the facts on this, please post.
I will update as I receive more responses on discord.
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I remember Seti@Home 
I was doing it using a few computers at my work
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I also would like to see some sources for those claims. Also, every time a claim is made, if it is not based on data, it is just meaningless (e.g., “reduce CPU usage” - by how much? by 0.0001%? that is still a reduction, so that claim is true, but it is worthless). My take is that other claim about db size dropping by 30% is just one more guess without any data behind it.
I think that a potential source of those guesses is the original @thechiaplot article from June. It made few claims, but didn’t provide any explanation or data behind those. At that time syncing was not yet such a big problem, and blockchain dbs were still happy sitting on HDs, or SDs for those using RPis. I posted a comment there yesterday, but so far there is no answer.