Does pruning affect a node's security or consensus ability?

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An SPV node certainly is a compromise of security because the full set of consensus rules are not verified by the node (for example block size or subsidy rules). A pruned node seems like a win-win, except you can't help new nodes bootstrap on to the network.

Are there any other tradeoffs?

pinhead

Posted 2017-03-05T19:58:21.147

Reputation: 2 356

Answers

1

Full nodes derive their security from enforcing all of the rules of Bitcoin self-sufficiently on any data they receive, and by validating the complete blockchain from the genesis block to the chain tip. This does not require keeping the data after validation.

Pruning nodes have the same security that archival nodes have, the only difference is that they cannot serve the blocks that they have pruned. As they keep all blockheaders, I assume that they could even recover from a chain reorganization beyond the pruned blocks although such a thing should never happen (the minimum pruning size is 540MB). Since following Bitcoin's rules is sufficient to converge to the chain-tip, pruning nodes have full consensus capability.

If a pruning node requires a -reindex for any reason, it will need to repeat the full Initial Block Download (IBD).

Murch

Posted 2017-03-05T19:58:21.147

Reputation: 41 609