Bitcoin Core 0.12 and Armory 0.94. Blown away. Is this true?!!

[pf]

I just looked into Bitcoin again after a few months break (of course HODLing in the meantime). I can hardly believe my eyes.

Bitcoin Core 0.12 allows block pruning. Store only 550 MB instead of tens of gigabytes. I am blown away! It sounds almost too good to be true, so I must ask, is this pruning really a safe thing to do? I thought the whole point of running Bitcoin Core was to be fully secure with a full node and the whole blockchain - in order to remove risks of attacks associated with light wallets like Electrum and Breadwallet. Wouldn't pruning the blockchain introduce such risks (or other risks) back into the equation? If not, why not?

Armory 0.94: "DB shrinked from 60GB to sub 200MB, >10x initial setup and startup speed". Sweet. My question now is, will Armory 0.94 work just fine and perfectly securely (just as securely as previously) if Bitcoin Core is running pruned (see questions above)? (May God bless goatpig by the way. You're the kingpin.)

[Carlton Banks]

Strongly advise not to attempt Bitcoin pruning mode with Armory.

[achow101]

Strongly advise not to attempt Bitcoin pruning mode with Armory.

Not just strongly advise, but you actually can't. Armory will not work with a pruned Bitcoin Core at all.

[pf]

Strongly advise not to attempt Bitcoin pruning mode with Armory.

Not just strongly advise, but you actually can't. Armory will not work with a pruned Bitcoin Core at all.

Oh, that's a bit sad. Is this because Armory can't ever do this, or because such support hasn't yet been implemented (but will in the future)?

[goatpig]

Oh, that's a bit sad. Is this because Armory can't ever do this, or because such support hasn't yet been implemented (but will in the future)?

There is no such support currently. It is fairly annoying to implement too as opposed to Armory uses currently. Lastly, you can't get the transaction history with a pruned Core. It adds to much complexity to get it to work, so I will not implement that.

I'm implementing litenode and blocks over P2P though, so setups that split the different elements of a full Armory blockchain processing stack will be reality instead.

[leemar]

I am a bit confused by this thread, It makes it sound like 0.94 requires the whole blockchain still i.e. 60gb.

[goatpig]

I am a bit confused by this thread, It makes it sound like 0.94 requires the whole blockchain still i.e. 60gb.

It does. It doesn't keep a full copy of the blockchain in its own DB anymore, so the total of Core + Armory went down from 120GB to 60GB.

[leemar]

Thanks for the explanation Goatpig.

While I have your ear, do we have anything to worry about a potential Bitcoin Classic Fork?

BTW, all your efforts are much appreciated.

[goatpig]

While I have your ear, do we have anything to worry about a potential Bitcoin Classic Fork?

I'm unsure which context you are asking this in. For what it's worth, Armory fully trusts the underlying network node, so you can run it against any implementation/fork as is as long as it respect the magic words and raw binary format Core uses.

[leemar]

OK If i read that correctly, Core is central to integrity of Armory, hence whatever fork may or may not happen the core reference implementation is what will be used.

[goatpig]

OK If i read that correctly, Core is central to integrity of Armory, hence whatever fork may or may not happen the core reference implementation is what will be used.

No it means you can run Armory on top of classic/xt/unlimited/whatever flavor of the month fork and it won't know the better.

[leemar]

That is a great help, I never understood the extent to which the application is independent of the underlying node.

[RoadStress]

Oh, that's a bit sad. Is this because Armory can't ever do this, or because such support hasn't yet been implemented (but will in the future)?

There is no such support currently. It is fairly annoying to implement too as opposed to Armory uses currently. Lastly, you can't get the transaction history with a pruned Core. It adds to much complexity to get it to work, so I will not implement that.

I'm implementing litenode and blocks over P2P though, so setups that split the different elements of a full Armory blockchain processing stack will be reality instead.

Thank you for your wise decision!

[belcher]

I'm implementing litenode and blocks over P2P though, so setups that split the different elements of a full Armory blockchain processing stack will be reality instead.

Any idea how you'd get the 'estimatefee' functionality? It's not exposed over p2p, I've been wondering the best way to do it.

[goatpig]

I'm implementing litenode and blocks over P2P though, so setups that split the different elements of a full Armory blockchain processing stack will be reality instead.

Any idea how you'd get the 'estimatefee' functionality? It's not exposed over p2p, I've been wondering the best way to do it.

Compute it yourself. Armory sees all tx, it can come up with the estimate from this data alone.