Pruning nodes have many disadvantages see below. Most important you no longer allow other new nodes to sync the full block chain.

• Cannot serve old blocks to other peers (no full blockchain sharing)

• Cannot enable txindex=1 (transaction index for querying by txid)

• getrawtransaction RPC fails for non-wallet transactions

• getblock RPC fails for pruned blocks

• getblockstats and similar historical RPCs fail for pruned data

• Full wallet rescans from before the prune height not possible

• Importing old private keys may miss historical transactions

• Electrum servers (Electrs, Fulcrum, ElectrumX) cannot run

• Block explorers (e.g., Esplora, BTC RPC Explorer full mode) cannot run

• Ordinals or inscription indexing not possible (requires full witness data)

• Taproot asset / Taro / RGB indexing not possible

• Lightning Network nodes (LND, c-lightning, etc.) have limited functionality or require workarounds

• Historical audit or channel verification for LN not possible

• Custom chain analytics or forensics not possible

• Sidechain / drivechain validation not possible

• Compact full rescans or data rebuilds (reindex=1) require re-downloading the chain

• Cannot act as a seed node or contribute to network data redundancy

• Some RPCs for proofs (gettxoutproof, verifytxoutproof) may fail

• Cannot run full-featured Bitcoin API or explorer services

• Cannot archive or share complete historical chain data