Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: Can I just run a pruned node without downloading historical data?
by
Beetkoin
on 07/10/2021, 10:12:52 UTC
That's exactly what a pruned node does actually. You construct the UTXO list yourself while downloading all blocks from genesis onwards, so you can be 100% sure that it's correct.
But looking up how much funds were on an address at an earlier point in time, whose block has been deleted from your drive, that has to be fetched from non-pruned full nodes.

Wow that is good news. I will want to run a pruned node.

However, when I first run Bitcoin Core / Bitcoin Knots, it only gives me two options. Both options require me to download the entire 350GB blockchain, regardless of whether I want to run a full node or a pruned node.

That triggers me a lot. Feels like the developers forcing me to do a lot of extra work.

And if I reinstall my computer or my harddisk fails, then I have to do everything all over again.

So I want to know if there is an implementation of Bitcoin where I can just start with a pruned node. I will sacrifice the security of verifying the entire chain from genesis for the convenience of just downloading what is necessary to construct a pruned node.