Feature suggestion: Prune Blocks (or at least share data)

[Up2UrHeadlights]

I’m running 3 nodes on one virtual machine and the Blockchain sync is filling up most of a 356GB disc. I want to run more nodes, but have pretty much run out of resources. Would it be possible to prune the data storage, and only keep the most recent blocks? Afaik helium miners have this feature, so I don’t see why it couldn’t work here. I think looking towards the future the current model assumes nodes will have infinite storage, and that’s just not sustainable.

[Jared]

Hello @Up2UrHeadlights,

Here is what I suggest. Monitor all nodes on monitor.incognito.org and delete out other shard data except for the assigned shard per node.

Depending on your configuration you can use a community member made script to use hard-links to link to the other nodes data and thus reduce the storage burden.

Node Operator Bootstrapping Introduction & Guide

Here is a node script I made to automate the creation of hard links. You could run it periodically without any problem to save a lot of space.

[Up2UrHeadlights]

Thank you for the idea, yes sharing the beacon data will help, and I will do this for now. However, it’s just kicking the can down the road. The Blockchain will presumably grow infinitely, and validators will eventually run out of storage.

[Jared]

State pruning was implemented a few weeks ago. The option for a lite node was not rolled out.

I would recommend bootstrapping your shard data with my guide here:

Node Operator Bootstrapping Introduction & Guide

Changelog: Version 1.5 - 6/9/2022 - Added fullnode support with option 55. Updated to the new bootstrap server. Optimized downloading of dependencies and will only check once per run. Bootstrap files will be updated daily to ensure users get back online as quickly as possible. What is “Bootstrapping”? Bootstrapping is the process of adding a pre-synced blockchain from a trusted source to your node, allowing you to skip part or all of the blockchain syncing process. Why do I wanna Bootstrap…

[Up2UrHeadlights]

Are there plans to enable for lite nodes eventually? I really think it’s an essential feature for the future of the protocol. I am currently running my nodes on my own VM server because VPS gets costly the more data you have to store and bandwidth you use. I’d love to move to a VPS and not have to worry about power outages (yes I’ve been slashed due to losing power last winter for 4 days). Again, in the current state, VPS is too costly to justify, and would be a huge boon to the stability of the network if more validators could more easily move to VPS.

[Up2UrHeadlights]

I will say my node server just corrupted it’s boot disk and I had to re-install, looks like it’ll take me around 4 hours to bootstrap all three nodes vs the week it would take syncing to the blockchain. This is absolutely going to save 2 of my nodes from being slashed, so I’m forever grateful. Also going to go ahead and create hard links for beacon, and a bonus is that 2 of my nodes choose Shard0, so I can further reduce my footprint. Still looking forward to the day the validator nodes can prune data, as I’d probably be running 10+ validators if this feature was present.