Can a pruned node do contract.getPastEvents("Transfer", { fromBlock: startBlock})

Question

Is it possible for a pruned Ethereum node to return data when calling the getPastEvents() function on a contract?

Answer 1

No. Pruned node removes the historical transaction receipts, which contains data for events that are stored as receipt logs.

Any GoEthereum geth instance that must serve historical data must run with --txlookuplimit 0 option (not default) to ensure the node does not prune historical receipts.

Otherwise you may get "Missing Trie Node" or similar error when trying to access historical data.