going back to my first post i was trying to correct lauda who seemed to suggest it only stored recent blocks.
The new Bitcoin Core version (0.12.0) enables you to run a wallet in pruned mode. This means that you can use it without storing the whole blockchain. Essentially it can cut down the usage from around 60 GB of data to around ~2 GB. You only store the last X amount of blocks.
thats not what the original version of what prune mode was envisioned.
the original vision was to no longer keep spent data. but keep every unspent
kind of funny that shorena would defend lauda (who thinks bitcoin is programmed in java) and then argue that im wrong. when i was saying the correct info..
as for my point about clarifying it.
When did you become someone that needs spoon feeding?
To recap, there are four types of data related to the blockchain in the bitcoin system: the raw blocks as received over the network (blk???.dat), the undo data (rev???.dat), the block index and the UTXO set (both LevelDB databases). The databases are built from the raw data.
Block pruning allows Bitcoin Core to delete the raw block and undo data once it's been validated and used to build the databases.
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/v0.11.0/doc/release-notes.md#block-file-pruningi know i know as i said before, that the real definition of pruning was as you said..
but the 550mb has got alot of people into a pickle that it must cut out some of the UTXO (laymens:unspent) to get to a possible level of 550mb hard drive space.
it needs to be clarified better that the 550mb is not total hard drive storage allocation of everything related to the blockchain but the separate parts related just to recent data that can change. and not related to archival data of unspents.
it may be wrote down in some places as far back as 2013-4-5 when the term pruning first came about. but the 2016 info on the actual release has made some left in a pickle thinking v0.12 is not the same as the original definition of pruning
not everyone knows that there are 4 categories of data. and alot of people think WTF is a UTXO..
the problem is that things need to be laymens. EG dont call it UTXO, call it unspents, its only 3 characters longer to type yet gives an easier understanding of the meaning.
i know geeks like to look smart by making up new buzzwords so they can get 5 minutes of fame telling the world how they create the buzzword that caught on and become fashionable.. but to the 7 billion people on the planet, buzzwords are causing bitcoin to become less open and transparent to the world.
and this very topic has proven to have got alot of people into a pickle about it. and people still unsure about it. so obviously the developers need to do more on the laymen communication side of things.
after all if it takes 3 pages of random questions. then obviously the documentation is lacking the basics..
thats all i was saying