Hi, bitmover, thanks! I haven't heard of pruned nodes, I like the term "chainstate".
My question now is why does the network still need full nodes, I mean what's being checked against the full nodes that can't be checked or trusted on the information of the pruned nodes?
Topic: Blockchain is 360GB and growing, can it be consolidated? - page 4. (Read 872 times)
Short answer: Because, that would force you to trust the system.
Long answer: You may have heard the term “Don't trust, verify” as it's said often in social media; it has a lot of point. Each block with all those transactions is valid, because your node verifies it. Because your node has checked that once you hash the content, you do, indeed, get a valid proof of work. This isn't something insignificant to just pass.
Once a person spends bitcoins, you don't trust the others that they've supposedly verified (and now discarded) the old blocks that contained their transactions. You don't trust anybody; you, instead, verify it yourself since the first block that this very guy has had that many bitcoins.
To give a simplified example: Say you wanted to run a node when the chain height is 100,000 and the network, by consensus, discards any block after the 1,000th most recent one. Once your node synced, you'd have verified that the transactions in the last 1,000 blocks are valid, but you'd have to trust that the rest nodes verified the other 99,000. You see the problem?
Long answer: You may have heard the term “Don't trust, verify” as it's said often in social media; it has a lot of point. Each block with all those transactions is valid, because your node verifies it. Because your node has checked that once you hash the content, you do, indeed, get a valid proof of work. This isn't something insignificant to just pass.
Once a person spends bitcoins, you don't trust the others that they've supposedly verified (and now discarded) the old blocks that contained their transactions. You don't trust anybody; you, instead, verify it yourself since the first block that this very guy has had that many bitcoins.
To give a simplified example: Say you wanted to run a node when the chain height is 100,000 and the network, by consensus, discards any block after the 1,000th most recent one. Once your node synced, you'd have verified that the transactions in the last 1,000 blocks are valid, but you'd have to trust that the rest nodes verified the other 99,000. You see the problem?
You are basically talking about a pruned node.
It would take about 5GB only, according this post
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/pros-and-cons-of-bitcoin-node-types-full-node-and-prune-node-5213552
They are safe to use. The user basically download the whole blockchain, but compress most of the data, so it doesn't occupy so much disk space.
You still need the same bandwidth
It would take about 5GB only, according this post
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/pros-and-cons-of-bitcoin-node-types-full-node-and-prune-node-5213552
Prune node
Pros:
Pros:
- Required about 5 GB by default (a little it more than 5 GB). [a]
- You don't have store all blockchain database on your computer
- You can run a prune node to get experience and pratice with Bitcoin core without significant pressure on your computer storage space.
- Chainstate: 3.5 GB
- Blocks: 2 GB
- Initial setup: 52.1 MB (see the below image)
They are safe to use. The user basically download the whole blockchain, but compress most of the data, so it doesn't occupy so much disk space.
You still need the same bandwidth
(Please forgive my lack of specific technical knowledge, my question is likely dumb, so help me understand why)
If the blockchain is a chain of transactions, and its purpose (among others) seems to be to avoid double spending, why can't it be regularly consolidated into a state condition (as in, "at this time, wallet1 has N bitcoins", "at this time, wallet2 has N bitcoins", etc. or however that information would be stored in the same/new blockchain) to save on space?
This consolidation would obviously have to be proven to be consistent with previous transaction history, but once it's done, it would be accepted and added to the blockchain.
Once a state is accepted and consolidated into the blockchain, I assume the entire history of transactions before that state could be discarded for most purposes.
If this consolidation happened, let's say, once a month, and only the record of transactions from the previous month and the previous state was kept, transactions would only need to be checked against this relatively small data set.
Does this make sense? What problems would arise from this that I'm not seeing? Thanks!
If the blockchain is a chain of transactions, and its purpose (among others) seems to be to avoid double spending, why can't it be regularly consolidated into a state condition (as in, "at this time, wallet1 has N bitcoins", "at this time, wallet2 has N bitcoins", etc. or however that information would be stored in the same/new blockchain) to save on space?
This consolidation would obviously have to be proven to be consistent with previous transaction history, but once it's done, it would be accepted and added to the blockchain.
Once a state is accepted and consolidated into the blockchain, I assume the entire history of transactions before that state could be discarded for most purposes.
If this consolidation happened, let's say, once a month, and only the record of transactions from the previous month and the previous state was kept, transactions would only need to be checked against this relatively small data set.
Does this make sense? What problems would arise from this that I'm not seeing? Thanks!
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