Hello everyone, I'm new here and new to counterparty. If I understood correctly counterparty protocol "lives" inside bitcoin blockchain by storing information inside of it. Previously I heard couple of times the in futire bitcoin blockchain might be pruned because its size is increasing so rapidly. Again, if I understood it correctly pruning will remove uninportant bits of data from blockchain to make it more lightweight and bitcoin more usable for everyone. So the question is, if bitcoin blockchain will be pruned can this make counterparty protocol completely non functional? Sorry if I sound dumb or something, still new to all this. Thanks in advance!
This is not an issue. No worries.
this is not quiet an explanation I wanted to receive. why is this not a problem? in fact I asked 3 or 4 people already and all said the same "it's not an issue" but no one explained why.
Regardless of whether or not there exist pruned nodes on the network, all full-nodes (including all solo-miners and pool operators) are by definition non-pruning nodes. Transactions that contain OP_RETURN data are included in blocks which are identified by their hash. As a result, OP_RETURN data is always included in the equation that results in a block hash. So that data is secured by the block chain, as explained in the satoshi whitepaper on pages 6 through 8.
Nodes that run pruning software don't store all transactions on their hard drive. It's sort of like SPV nodes, they depend on other full nodes or trusted nodes to send them verified block hashes. Pruning nodes verify the data and then delete it, IIRC.
