In this blog post we will differentiate between archival and pruned nodes, as well as how an SPV wallet compares to them. Archival vs Pruned Nodes Archival and pruned nodes are two types of full nodes in the Bitcoin network. A full node is a type of software that fully validates and stores a complete copy of the bitcoin blockchain, which contains all the transaction records since its inception. The main difference between archival and pruned nodes is the amount of historical data they store.