Ethereum: Is pruning the history of transactions implemented in the Bitcoin Client Satoshi?
The original Bitcoin paper from Nakamoto proposes a method of destroying old transactions by calculating the Merkle tree from the entire history of transactions and by depositing only a part of the tree. This approach is based on the idea that if we have enough data, it would be impossible for the attacker to reverse the transaction block.
However, this implementation was later modified and extended by the Ethereum project, which used a different approach known than pruning. In fact, one of the bitcoin clients is Satoshi Nakamoto, BCNF (bitcoin nerve firmware), based on this pruning mechanism.
Pruning involves identifying a subgroup of the history of transactions that can be safely discarded without any risk or detection too much information to the attacker. The aim is to create a “fingerprint” of transactions that are not necessary to understand the structure and dynamics of the blockchain.
Does Ethereum implement this pruning mechanism? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Although it is likely that Satoshi Nakamoto has never intended to make his Bitcoin client be used in a public network such as Ethereum, which uses a different consensual algorithm (process to verify the transaction) and the transaction verification process.
Ethereum’s history of blockchain, known as “blocklog”, contains all the transactions that have ever been mined in the Ethereum network. Although this blocklog can provide valuable information about the business and network development over time, it does not contain any pruning of transaction history.
However, pruning has some indirect benefits. By analyzing a large number of blocks, it is possible to identify formulas and correlations between different transactions that may indicate future events or security threats. In addition, pruning can help reduce the requirements for storing blockchains as it stores the necessary information only for the reconstruction of the blockchain.
In short, while the Ethereum pruning mechanism was inspired by the original Bitcoin client of Satoshi Nakamoto, it was not implemented on the platform due to differences in consensual algorithms and transaction verification processes. However, this approach offers some knowledge of the potential security consequences of pruning the history of transactions.