Pruning allows you to discard old blocks so that your node uses less disc space. Downside is that if you try to load a new wallet or restore a backup you can't rescan the blockchain and may have to redo IBD.
Yes, I prune54.2%
I have pruned in the past, but not now12.5%
No, I have loads of storage33.3%
24 votes \ 1 day left
Think I'll be ok for a few more years.
Long ago!
Do you find the storage requirements for running a node with the whole blockchain to be bothersome?
I used to run Core on my old laptop. Since I had old hard drives I needed to prune
I, too, run it on a laptop. But I have a 1 TB drive, so I'm still doing okay. Gonna have to prune or get a 2TB drive soon.
If you want a lasting at-home setup, I have one of them Odroid M2s (tho I got mine a lot cheaper - due to RAM prices prolly) with one of them Samsung 9900 Pro NVMe thingies (tho I got mine a lot cheaper - due to no tariffs prolly)
And these work perfect for me. IBD was reasonably fast too.
The big difference is that I paid approx $300 for the entire setup... versus this saying it'll be way over $1k. So I'm not sure if it's worth it over a disk migration.
I have one but it's a candidate to be scrapped when I get to it. I used to have that running for an external indexer to just pick the last blocks off, but I no longer use that and it's in disarray.
I also have 3 full, 2 sync'd (one for serving archive, 1 private one that doesn't allow incoming) and 1 unsync'd (for the rpi4 tests I still need to finish) - those I do use.
I have seen pruned nodes catch some hate, but I have heard of people successfully running lightning nodes on a pruned Bitcoin node (I have not successfully done so, myself).
I think the hate is aimed at the virtue signaling of "I'm running a node" when it's pruned or firewalled or tor-only, because if everyone would do that then there wouldn't be a network.
But there are definite scenarios in which you'll want to run a pruned node - based on personal circumstance. So don't feel hated just because there are haters. If everyone is sovereign then there is free choice, though it would be awful if there is tragedy of the commons on archival node slots. So if you can run a full node, run that.
I'm surprised that the poll has more than 50% saying they prune (at 23 responses). I didn't think it was that common.
I think that many people just go with defaults, and last time I checked core has a popup on ibd that says do you wanna prune?
I think many home nodes are on old spare hardware, so its not that surprising. But I too answered yes even though I run a fully public full node too. So its maybe a bit skewed.
I have done to get the node up and running faster. It was on an old computer that was taking too long to do the IBD.
Tried to deploy a watchtower on a pruned node on a cheap VPS once but ran into some lnd bug. I believe it's fixed now but haven't tried again yet.