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I noticed that the Monero chain compresses about 60%, would it be possible to compress blocks before sending them from a remote node to a syncing wallet thus saving a big chunk of bandwidth and time?
Does anyone know if this is already happening during sync, or if not why?
edit: this can be done using ssh tunnels, if you have ssh access to your remote server. The "-C" option enables compression.
ssh -C -NL 18089:localhost:18089 server_username@server_address
Now you can set your wallet to 127.0.0.1:18089 and now your wallet syncing should be faster, enjoy!
There are established compression standards which should avoid all of the issues you mention. Obviously we would not compress to the point where it takes longer to decompress than to download over a 1mbit/s connection or cause data loss.
Most software distributed over the internet is compressed despite all the "unknowns" being present. Data stream compression is likewise beneficial and established when transferring large amounts of data to remote locations, such as backups.
Let us not get caught up in analysis paralysis and instead stick to practical solutions that will benefit the majority of users.