Counterparty protocol and Bitcoin blockchain pruning

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!

Hi! As I posted below in Bitcoin Core 0.11 blockchain pruning is automatically disabled if txindex is on (and it must be on for Counterparty server to be able to use Bitcoin Core), so it’s not a dumb question, but Counterparty Server won’t be able to take advantage of that. But you can use a Web wallet or client app which does not need a local instance of Counterparty server or Bitcoin Core.

IMO if there is an issue with the blockchain getting to big, counterparty would be the least of the worries as it only adds a max of 40 bytes to each transaction. If the Blockchain is getting big thats because transactions are increasing and you will have blockchain bloat concerns regardless.

Thats actually my only concern i have with bitcoin in general, i dont care about the 51% attack, but if bitcoin does the same amount of volume as lets say visa (10,000 per minute) then the whole system is gonna have problems.

I do not believe so, but either @something or @brighton36 would be more qualified to answer that question then i would.

The blockchain is immutable, that’s the main feature of bitcoin.
So nothing that’s “burned” into the blockchain can be reversed (once it gets enough confirmations).

The blockchain contains all sorts of info, including prayers and ASCII pr0n.

I’ll probably do a video on this, but in the meantime, here’s the scoop!

‘The blockchain’ can be represented in many forms. There is only one full-form of the blockchain, and that will never change. When you see references to “SPV” mode, or “pruning” - what’s being described are options for some users to represent a fraction of the blockchain, and still be able to participate in some way. When data is ‘prunable’ it means that it can be discarded for some functions. It does not mean that all participants will discard the data. (And it is certain that some participants will always retain all data)

Does that answer the question?

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