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I’ve connected Sparrow Wallet to a pruned Bitcoin node but none of my UTXOs are showing. I would imagine that since I haven't spent them and since pruned nodes still keep the entire UTXO set, my bitcoins (UTXOs) should be accessible on the node.

Is there something I’m doing wrong?

Murch
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The-null-Pointer-
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1 Answers1

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You can't ask for UTXOs from arbitrary nodes on the networks, because there is no way to verify that information.

You need to ask for blocks. And a pruned node cannot provide those.

Pieter Wuille
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    Thanks Pieter. I thought the utxo set is a database (leveldb) on it's own that could be queried independently. I'm curious what's the benefit of allowing pruned nodes then if external wallets can't utilize them? – The-null-Pointer- Jan 14 '22 at 07:04
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    Any node, for any purpose, can use pruned nodes for everything they can use other nodes, **once** they've caught up with synchronization. The only thing a pruned node cannot provide is historical old blocks. Once a node is synchronized with the network, they can use pruned nodes or others to stay in sync, relay transactions, relay blocks, get other nodes' IP addresses, ... – Pieter Wuille Aug 15 '22 at 12:23
  • It sounds to me like the user was connecting their Sparrow Wallet to their own local pruned node. Assuming that they trust the node because they have synced it themselves, a thin client could theoretically use `dumptxoutset` and then scan that, couldn’t they? – Murch Jan 30 '23 at 19:24
  • I assumed the question was about P2P connections (which is intended for untrusting peers). If you have RPC access or some other form of privileged access to a trusted node, the situation is different of course. – Pieter Wuille Jan 30 '23 at 19:30