Bitcoin Forum

I have always had problems with Bitcoin core wallet. I opened my wallet the other day to synch it and it was 27 Weeks out.....I let it run overnight and throughout the day yesterday and i'm down to 24 Weeks out.

What in the hell am i doing wrong?  It's not my Firewall it's not my Internet connection.......I have always had a problem running this at it's dead slow speed.



Is there another Wallet that is safe and i wouldn't have to worry about this garbage core that i have always had problems with? I just can't use this Garbage wallet anymore.

Suggestions?
Thanks

I advise you to use Multibit HD. Actually most wallets are just fine.

And for official wallet, if I remember correctly, if you fibd a bootstrap file to start with, you get much faster.

Bitcoin Core takes so long because it has to download the entire blockchain. If you want it to go faster, you need either better hardware or an SPV wallet. What is slowing you down might be your processor. Bitcoin Core can download all of the blocks fairly quickly, but depending on the speed of your processor, it can take several hours to a few days since the processor has to do a lot of work with indexing all of the blocks it has downloaded.

If you don't want to use Bitcoin Core, I recommend that you use Electrum as I think that it is one of the safest SPV wallets out there.

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With the Bitcoin Core 0.10+ the bootstrap.dat is actually slower.

Core is not rubbish. It has had performance bumps throughout releases... Just choose a wallet that fits you better.

Bitcoin core 0.12 has significant performance improvements compared to previous versions. Try updating to it first.
Check your CPU usage if Bitcoin Core is actively verifying the blocks.

The peers might be a problem. Having bad peers could slow down the downloads significantly. Try adding peers with good internet connection.

Bootstrap.dat does not help,  when downloading recent blocks. It would require the bootstrap.dat to be updated regularly. And it would require the user to download the entire blockchain and verify everything.

You need the whole blockchain if you want to run  a true Bitcoin wallet. If you don't want to wait for the download, then find someone to give you a copy on a USB stick. Alternatively, use a 3rd party wallet, and lose the security of the basic Bitcoin concept. You don't have to run a node to use Bitcoin, but if you don't run a node, you have to trust someone else with your wallet.

It's an one-time inconvenience. Just leave it fully sync for a few days, backup the blockchain and you won't have to deal with it never again.

That's the cost for fully validating security

In order to get a lot of speedup, the entire sync process would need to be changed: https://bitco.in/forum/forums/iguana.23/

Here is a recent internal test result:

1st.201 N[202] Q.-1238 h.402527 r.402001 c.0:402000:0 s.402258 d.201 E.201:468440 M.402526 L.402527 est.128 33.6MB 0:32:13 1.248 peers.128/1024 Q.(0 0)

it synced s.402258 blocks in just over half hour 0:32:13

That was on a VPS with very good connection 500mbps, if you have 20mbps, then it would take 5 to 7 hours.

However, it does take a lot more time to finish all the calculations, approx another half hour to update balances for all addresses (like blockexplorer). At that point things will be usable, but bloated as it takes about 40GB nowadays.

So to compress the files:
Exportable Squashfs 4.0 filesystem, xz compressed, data block size 131072
compressed data, compressed metadata, compressed fragments, compressed xattrs
duplicates are removed
Filesystem size 16515912.19 Kbytes (16128.82 Mbytes)
39.70% of uncompressed filesystem size (41600283.85 Kbytes)

that took another 40 minutes, but the end result is a readonly filesystem (which protects from data being changed) and 16GB size. signature validation would happen in parallel with this step, but both are CPU intensive.

If you enable relaying then the vindata will also need to be kept around and that is currently not optimized as it is expected full nodes will not be space constrained. iguana does not mine new blocks though, so it is not appropriate to use if you are a miner.

If to sync at the 16GB file level, then that is 75% less data, so even on 20mbps connection, I think a few hours would be enough, but that skips the validation of signatures so you would need to manually verify the tip matches trusted sites.

I am seeing on some systems, iguana is getting strange performance results. Havent isolated the cause yet, but if there are people that want to test iguana, just let me know. It is currently parallel syncing and then seamlessly going to realtime mode, but the RPC is still not fully enabled, that is next on the list to debug

James

Thanks to all other wallets which do run without having the trouble to install the Core.Electrum is the next possible best in my opinion.There are other online wallets like Blokchain.info/Xapo,but I'd not advise trusting an online wallet.Core has advantages over all of them though,in complex issues of transactions getting rejected by node or not conformed since a long time due to low fees,its easy to re broadcast them using core.Apart from that,for quick and hefty transfers ,use Electrum.

With segwit fraud proofs, spv wallets could provide similiar security to fully validating node

utxo checkpointing could further improve the status quo

I assume you actually want to solve your problem and not change wallets.

There are a few possible bottlenecks

#1 CPU
#2 Disk (HDD/SSD)
#3 Internet speed.

in order to understand whats slowing you down, we need to know which is the slowest part. Does the bitcoin core internal network monitor (if you are using the GUI) show constant download or peeks from time to time? Which CPU are you using and what load do you observe? Do you use a mechanical disk or a SSD?

yeah ... unfortunaly , as many many over users,  i have to agree: bitcoincore really suck ..

i'm really happy with many over wallets, like electrum, multibit , mycellium, etc etc.. i had always got issues with bitcoincore, except with the original version..  :-\ i really dont suggest to use it.

At this point the only people who need to use Bitcoin Core are people running a node. Its just not a good solution for the average Bitcoin user. Who wants to download 68+ GB of data just to start using the wallet? And if you don't leave the wallet open you quickly fall out of sync. SPV wallets will be the future for the average user and there is no other way around it. Satoshi himself predicted this would happen.

So i d/l the version 0.12 and re-downloaded  a fresh new wallet and the entire Blockchain in just over 2 days. Not sure what the issues were with the older versions but What a huge improvement V 0.12 is Wow!

Now i just have to put some BTC in it lol

Although it seems like OP has other problems than what you've listed, considering his speed is incredibly slow.
I think he has problem connecting to peers and the rest is fine.