But if I understand correctly, lightning nodes need to check if a counterparty is broadcasting an old channel state and in response broadcast a penalty/justice transaction. Does that mean lightning nodes only need to watch for transactions that come after the funding transaction? Is that the only reason lightning needs to run bitcoind with txindex?
If that is the case, and a lightning node only needs to query transactions broadcast after the funding transaction, then a pruned bitcoind instance with txindex might be a bit handy.
Also from [1] it seems that indexing pruned nodes is not supported because it doesn't make sense, not that it was infeasible. Now with the lightning requirements, does an indexed pruned node start to make sense?
Once again, please forgive my naive understanding of some of the issues involved and thanks for your patience.
Regards
Kulpreet
> On 3/17/18, someone posted on the Lightning-dev list, "Can I try
> Lightning without running a fully-fledged bitcoin block chain? (Yubin
> Ruan)." The inquirer was asking because he didn't have much space to
> store the entire blockchain on his laptop.
>
> I replied:
>
> "Developers,
>
> On THIS note and slightly off-topic but relevant, why can't chunks of
> blockchain peel off the backend periodically and be archived, say on
> minimum of 150 computers across 7 continents?
>
> It seems crazy to continue adding on to an increasingly long chain to
> infinity if the old chapters (i.e. more than, say, 2 years old) could be
> stored in an evenly distributed manner across the planet. The same 150
> computers would not need to store every chapter either, just the index
> would need to be widely distributed in order to reconnect with a chapter
> if needed. Then maybe it is no longer a limitation in the future for
> people like Yubin. "
>
> It was suggested by a couple of lightning developers that I post this
> idea on the bitcoin-dev list. So, here I post :).
>
You can already use the "prune" flag to get a snapshot of the blockchain
but it is incompatible with "txindex" and "rescan" so maybe that is and
issue for lightning nodes?
--
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware
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