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From the article:
  • This is a remarkable development because it was not possible before. Considering that some people only have a smartphone and not desktops or laptops, allowing them to run a node is a big step towards decentralization. By removing all unneeded data, without losing trustlessness, we are making nodes more accessible for end-users.*
I am not sure that this is such a big/new deal? After all, wallets like Breez and Phoenix already run a Neutrino node on the device. There seems to be little difference between an on-device Neutrino node and an on-device Floresta node ?
Or am I missing something?
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(I apologize for the super late response, just now I found out about this post)
I'm the author of this, and here's the difference: Neutrino is a privacy preserving alternative to a third-party address indexer. It's a way to sync your wallet without requiring a centralized third party like an electrum server. However, neutrino doesn't validate blocks and transactions, it doesn't even authenticate the filters it uses.
Floresta is a fully validating, lightweight Bitcoin node. It's like running Bitcoin Core, but using way less resources due to an aggressive pruning and Utreexo.
Neutrino is lightning only, right? (Not entirely sure how it accesses the chain).
Floresta is on-chain only.
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