Monero is striving to be a currency that everyone can use, the growth of the blockchain is starting to hamper this goal IMO.
I think we should consider dropping blocks off of the chain tail once we reach block height of 4000000. This will give us 10 years of storage capacity, more than enough IMO.
Similar to how you have to exchange bills of cash once they get worn, you would simply churn your coins to get your outputs into younger blocks.
We are trying to be digital cash not an inheritance vault. If we had this feature from the start 99% of the community would agree with it.
Please consider this.๐
*Edit: @4KB/tx * 100,000tx/day we are looking at ~400MB chain growth daily, this is not sustainable, let's take care of this now before it becomes a big problem
**Edit: A possible solution could be that nodes would have the option to set chain retention duration. So when syncing a new node you can select that you would like to retain 5 years of chain data, with a minimum boundary enforced that retains sufficient security. This way the network decides in a fair way how much chain data is useful to store.
To use Monero properly you have to run a node, using remote nodes is just a workaround. Pruned nodes are a good solution for now. Either way someone has to run a node for you to use the coin.
It is not possible to sync a node from restore height, you are talking about syncing a wallet, I am talking about syncing a node. If you could sync a node from a desired height this conversation would be moot.
A user should be able to download the GUI wallet sync the chain and be ready to use Monero properly in an hour or two on a modern PC without any worry of running out of disk space.
About forcing people, we should not be forced to sync and store old data to use Monero because someone is too lazy to click a button every 10 years.
The health, performance, ease of on-boarding and use of the network is much more important than someone trying to store coins over a decade.
The network is not capable of infinite storage, it will become unusable by most. If there is a better solution than dropping blocks I am all for it, until then dropping aged blocks is a valid solution.