Let’s simplify this: State Bloat is the accumulated storage size of all current account balances, smart contract code, and smart contract storage data. Pruning is the process where a node deletes old, unnecessary historical data (like spent UTXOs) to reduce its disk space requirement.

To put it simply, if the state (all active data) becomes too large (e.g., multiple terabytes), running a Full Node becomes too expensive, leading to fewer participants. Fewer participants means less decentralization, posing a risk to the network's security model.

Here is the key takeaway. The challenge is balancing verification vs. accessibility. While the entire history must be verifiably stored by someone, pruning allows more people to run archival nodes (which store the complete history) and pruned nodes (which store only the current, active state), improving network diversity.

Like any technology, state pruning has its limitations: A pruned node cannot provide historical data on demand. If a user needs to verify a very old transaction, they must rely on a specialized, resource-intensive archival node or a third-party service.