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 performed by Riecoin Core 2501 and older, making the Synchronization extremely slow. Using a Bootstrap as explained below allows one to skip these checks until a recent point.

From Riecoin Core Dev 2503, some Checkpoint Data is hardcoded, allowing to automatically and securely skip expensive checks, making it possible without a Bootstrap to sync reasonably quickly 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 2322000 as of Dev 2503) where it suddenly gets much slower, this is normal.

A Riecoin Node should ideally always be operational so it can continuously fetch Blocks and remain synced. There is however no problem if 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.

Bootstrapping

Manual Download

The instructions in this section are deprecated, there is no more need for manually downloading a Bootstrap for Riecoin Core Dev 2503 or later. A Bootstrap will soon no longer be provided here, but one can easily create a Bootstrap as explained in the section below.

For 2501 and older, a Bootstrap up to Block 2308404 (2025-02-25) is available (blocks, chainstate, and optional indexes folders, to be put in the Data Directory, create if necessary). To download it in command line, you can use

Make a Bootstrap

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.