# kaal:claim:3782198-033

**Claim.** Blockchain transactions will always be expensive whether or not proof of stake is solved, because full participation requires downloading the entire transaction history to verify validity, an extreme redundancy that cannot be removed.

**Type.** failure  **Support.** argued

**Holds when.**

- applies to blockchains that require full history verification

**Source quote.**

> If you want to fully participate in the network, you need to download a copy of the entire history of every transaction of every bitcoin in existence. This extreme re- dundancy and inefficiency means transactions will always be expensive.

**From.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, *Contemporary Decentralization* (2021), New tools: blockchain protocols, page 31

**Cite as.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, Contemporary Decentralization (2021). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3782198

**Verify.** sha256 of source PDF `e7e1378e3eed06cace6534e7792a7307d607d18bc6beb4ac45896476280728e4` at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wulfkaal/Academic-Papers/main/papers/pdf/Calcaterra%20and%20Kaal%20-%202021%20-%20Contemporary%20Decentralization.pdf

**Failure mode.** permanent-cost-of-full-verification  (family: scalability-and-throughput-limit)

**Topics.** blockchain, consensus-and-security

**Keywords.** blockchain-costs, redundancy, scalability, proof-of-stake

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of the claim. Its sha256 is the content hash used for attestation.