[sp332]

Don't you have to download the full blockchain when you bootstap a new node, to verify all the transactions? After you verify that a transaction has been spent, you can prune it from your local copy. But someone still has to keep all the old transactions around for new nodes to download, right?

[Natanael_L]

In theory, in the future the blockchain status can be compressed to just the "UTXO set" (unspent transaction outputs) with a Zero-knowledge proof of correctness. That would be a form of maximal trust free pruning.