Synchronization

Due to the nature of Blockchain Technology, a Riecoin node needs to be synchronized in order to be fully functional. This page describes the Sync process in Riecoin Core and how one can handle it.

Process

When starting for the first time, Riecoin Core will download and validate a copy of the Riecoin Blockchain. This will take a variable amount of time depending on the power of the machine and the release date of the version of Riecoin Core as more than 11 years of Blocks and Transactions are processed. Once it caught up, it will keep fetching newly generated Blocks. There are two phases of syncing, firstly only the Block Headers are processed, then the Block themselves.

The PoW check in Riecoin is particularly expensive, and is exhaustively performed by Riecoin Core 2501 and older, making the Synchronization extremely slow and basically requiring the use of a Bootstrap. From Riecoin Core 2505, some Checkpoint Data is hardcoded, allowing to automatically and securely skip expensive checks, making it possible to sync reasonably quickly without a Bootstrap until the last hardcoded point. However, Blocks generated after that point are still fully checked, so when synchronizing for the first time, blocks will be quickly processed until that point (Block 2350000 as of 2505) where it suddenly gets much slower, this is normal.

Ideally, A Riecoin Node should always be operational so it can continuously fetch Blocks and remain synced. There is however no problem with closing Riecoin Core for a few days, though catching up missing Blocks for weeks or months may already take a while, and even a few days behind can be a problem for low power devices such as Raspberry Pis.

When reopening a wallet after a while, it will not be aware of transactions that might have been made after the latest known Block, so balances may be inaccurate until the synchronization is finished and the transactions included in the wallet database.

Bootstrapping

This consists of reusing an already processed blockchain to skip the sync process until a recent point, which can be very practical to reduce bandwidth and computational costs when syncing multiple nodes.

One can easily make a Bootstrap from a fully synchronized Riecoin Core. The software should firstly be stopped. Then, the Blockchain data can be retrieved in the Data Directory: the folders blocks, chainstate and optionally indexes contain it and can be copy pasted to the Data Directory of another computer intended to run Riecoin Core. These three folders can safely be shared as they do not contain Wallet information.

Other Notes

On Windows, the Antivirus will strongly hinder the progress. Temporarily disabling the Antivirus will help synchronizing faster.