Light client

A light client is a blockchain client that syncs only block headers and fetches specific data with cryptographic proofs from full nodes, avoiding the cost of downloading and validating the entire chain.

Light clients suit constrained environments — browsers, mobile wallets, embedded devices — where storing full state is impractical. They track headers to follow the chain tip and request Merkle proofs for the specific balances or transactions they need, verifying those proofs against a trusted header. The tradeoff is dependence on well-behaved full nodes for data availability. Applications that need deep history or decoded logs instead call an archive RPC endpoint, where a provider-run full node does the heavy retrieval.