[CHALLENGE] Run A Bitcoin Node: 14 Days To 14 Merits

[tech30338]

snip

Did it worked? Have I done everything correctly? It's my first time running a node, so correct me if I'm wrong anywhere. I haven't touched any settings. Everything shown in the images were the default ones. Should I change anything? Also I'm not really sure if my bandwidth connection is fit for running a node, as you see it says 30MB for 2 minutes,lol (I know it's very slow, can't really help with that). At least I'm trying.....

when did you start mine is just 4 years remaining I think it has something to do with your internet connection 49% in progress

[1714550702]

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[1714550702]

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[ABCbits]

Since pruning is allowed, i expect someone will try download pruned node snapshot from 3rd party in order to skip download first 500GB+ of blockchain.

No pruned blockstate images exist in the wild though - someone would actually have to run the client in order to make such data.

I do not count "airdropped merit" differently from any other merits.

It's not true, try search "pruned bitcoin snapshot" on DuckDuckGo and you'll find few website data created a year ago or more recent.

That's not how Bitcoin works. It downloads all blocks from start to finish, but it discards all but the last N megabytes of recent block data.

Convince me why that should be the case, to first download the whole blockchain just to discard it later? Who designed that logic?

At least for Bitcoin Core, you need to download whole blockchain to verify almost everything and build UTXO set.

[DYING_S0UL]

No worries, it'll be finished in a few years 

Haha. I have always found the "estimated time left" on Core to be notoriously unreliable.

After running the bitcoin core I understood what you were trying to say. Exactly it's notoriously unreliable. First it showed me 12 fricking years. More than a decade. But as time went by it gradually started to drop. From 12 years, it went 10, 9, 8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 years and lastly stuck at 2 weeks now. Lol  .

[NotATether]

Progress:

Code:

Day 1:
tech30338
Ultegra134
DYING_S0UL

[Ultegra134]

Haha. I have always found the "estimated time left" on Core to be notoriously unreliable. Assuming you are downloading at least 1 MB/s (12 Mbps should give you 1.5 MB/s as a theoretical maximum), then it should take around 150 hours to download the ~540 GB blockchain, which is the equivalent of 6.25 days if you run non-stop (assuming as well that your hardware can keep up with its speed of verification).

Yeah, it is; it was showing 10 to 12 days after a while. I'm not sure if I can keep my laptop running 24/7 for so many days, but I'll give it a go after I return from work. Right now, I've set pruning to 45 GB; can I change that afterwards? If I see decent progress, I don't mind setting it to 100 GB. I have approximately 200 GB of space on my SSD, and the HDD is quite full, but my main concern remains my internet, as its speed is quite unstable.

[o_e_l_e_o]

can I change that afterwards?

Yes absolutely, although your client won't go back and download old blocks; rather it will just stop pruning until you hit your new limit.

So let's say you had set your prune limit to 50 GB. You have downloaded and verified the first 200 GB of the blockchain, meaning the first 150 GB has been pruned, and you are storing the next 50 GB. If you now change your prune limit to 100 GB, your client won't go back to redownload blocks you already downloaded and pruned, but will instead just not prune anything until you hit your new prune limit of 100 GB, which you will reach once you are 250 GB through the initial block download.

In the Core GUI you just click on Settings -> Options, and the option to change the prune limit is there.

[LoyceV]

You need to download Bitcoin Core (any version from this decade) and run bitcoind, the bitcoin daemon, for at least 14 days.

I do like encouraging people to run Bitcoin Core, but why start with CLI? I wouldn't start with bitcoind, but use the GUI version (bitcoin-qt) instead. It's much easier to use.

I've got two drives on my laptop, one SSD and one HDD, but both are barely over 700 GB in capacity, with the HDD used to store all large files whatsoever. I'm unable to download that much data, but I could do it with 60–70 GB, or perhaps a little more, if that's okay.

I have 2 drives in my laptop too, and both can be upgraded 700 GB SSD is most likely enough to run anything you want smoothly, while the HDD can be as big as you want for storage at low cost. But don't make the mistake I made, and don't get a disk that gets very, very slow when writing a lot. Also: chainstate on SSD, blocks on HDD works fine.

Fellow members please don't try to cheat in any way, if you don't want to earn something else instead of merits.

So you're saying I can't sell Bitcoin Core screenshots?

Convince me why that should be the case, to first download the whole blockchain just to discard it later? Who designed that logic?

It's called a blockchain for a reason. Bitcoin Core knows the genesis block, and the only way to know that you're on the right chain without trusting any third party is by verifying all blocks on your own.

4. How much bandwidth would I need? My connection is only 5 mbps.

My current blocks directory is 570 GB. At 5 Mbit max, it's going to take at least 10 days. Don't do this if you have a data limit.

Also, this could be considered as merit buying, think about it, one could pay for a VPS and just like that farm 14 + some extra on top from you and other generous sources. So think about a solution to stop such abuses. 🤓

By all means, do it: Bitcoin Core download: the cheapest pay-per-hour VPS I found! If someone goes through the trouble of learning how to setup a VPS and bitcoind, that's worth the Merits. I paid $0.50 for a full blockchain download last year.

With 450 MB dbcache, this is going to take a long time. If you have the RAM, you should largely increase this (4096 or even 8192, but don't make it more than half your RAM).

It's not true, try search "pruned bitcoin snapshot" on DuckDuckGo and you'll find few website data created a year ago or more recent.

I created such service years ago: Bitcoin Core pruned blockchain: download it here! (DON'T DO THIS!). But don't do this

New Bitcoin Core users: don't underestimate the hardware demands from Bitcoin Core. Considering chainstate is currently 9.6 GB in size (it grew a lot thanks to the Ordinal spam), I don't think you should attempt to run Bitcoin Core with 8 GB RAM anymore. It's going to be very slow.

[Ultegra134]

Yes absolutely, although your client won't go back and download old blocks; rather it will just stop pruning until you hit your new limit.

So let's say you had set your prune limit to 50 GB. You have downloaded and verified the first 200 GB of the blockchain, meaning the first 150 GB has been pruned, and you are storing the next 50 GB. If you now change your prune limit to 100 GB, your client won't go back to redownload blocks you already downloaded and pruned, but will instead just not prune anything until you hit your new prune limit of 100 GB, which you will reach once you are 250 GB through the initial block download.

In the Core GUI you just click on Settings -> Options, and the option to change the prune limit is there.

Thank you. I'll stick to 45 GB for now and see how it progresses in the upcoming days. If everything is going smoothly, I'll switch it to 100 or 200 GB.

Something I haven't understood though, I've never used Bitcoin Core in the past and this is all new to me, so excuse me if I'm asking dumb questions. I have the client running, go to CMD to run the command "bitcoin-cli getblockchaininfo" that Tether has mentioned in the original post, but receive this error.


Have I understood something incorrectly?

Here's the client running



Supposedly, it'll only take 3 more days.

[DYING_S0UL]

With 450 MB dbcache, this is going to take a long time. If you have the RAM, you should largely increase this (4096 or even 8192, but don't make it more than half your RAM).

I have 8GB RAM. How much dbcache should I choose then? Yup, it's taking a long timeeee...(Running it nonstop for 7-8 hours)

Currently at:

Block: 553667
Progress: 3%
Per hour: 0.50-0.60%
Time left: 6-7 days

New Bitcoin Core users: don't underestimate the hardware demands from Bitcoin Core. Considering chainstate is currently 9.6 GB in size (it grew a lot thanks to the Ordinal spam), I don't think you should attempt to run Bitcoin Core with 8 GB RAM anymore. It's going to be very slow.

So is there any risk of damaging hardware/device? Mine is 4-5 years old. I'm totally running it out of curiosity. It's my first time. 

[LoyceV]

I have the client running, go to CMD to run the command "bitcoin-cli getblockchaininfo" that Tether has mentioned in the original post, but receive this error.

You have the GUI-client running, not the daemon. So click Window > Console, and enter getblockchaininfo there. Don't use bitcoin-cli with the GUI.

Supposedly, it'll only take 3 more days.

In my experience, it gets slower once blocks get larger.

I have 8GB RAM. How much dbcache should I choose then?

I would set it to 4096. But if the rest of your system needs RAM too, it's going to slow down everything with active swapping.

So is there any risk of damaging hardware/device?

It could be a problem wasn't noticed before until the system was under heavy load.

[Ultegra134]

You have the GUI-client running, not the daemon. So click Window > Console, and enter getblockchaininfo there. Don't use bitcoin-cli with the GUI.

Right, understood, thank you!

In my experience, it gets slower once blocks get larger.

Yeah, it's been really slow the past few hours, progress per hour has dropped from 1.5% to 0.5%, still a long way to go. Set pruning to 35 GB, will see how it progresses and will consider reverting back to 45 GB tomorrow.

Not sure if this counts as the first day or the second, it's fine either way.
Quoting the "getblockchaininfo" command's results below.


{
  "chain": "main",
  "blocks": 299499,
  "headers": 824386,
  "bestblockhash": "00000000000000001d3577d6a4126e83b37bf2acfbaf94d4bf743abed97c7a7b",
  "difficulty": 8000872135.968163,
  "time": 1399439926,
  "mediantime": 1399437134,
  "verificationprogress": 0.0421326620216018,
  "initialblockdownload": true,
  "chainwork": "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000056d5ef27e0186d01b5cc",
  "size_on_disk": 21120642946,
  "pruned": true,
  "pruneheight": 0,
  "automatic_pruning": true,
  "prune_target_size": 34999369728,
  "warnings": ""
}

So is there any risk of damaging hardware/device? Mine is 4-5 years old. I'm totally running it out of curiosity. It's my first time.  

Beat me, I'm using a 10 year old refurbished HP ProBook, 4th generation i5 but 12 GB of ram.

[oktana]

I have the client running, go to CMD to run the command "bitcoin-cli getblockchaininfo" that Tether has mentioned in the original post, but receive this error.

You have the GUI-client running, not the daemon. So click Window > Console, and enter getblockchaininfo there. Don't use bitcoin-cli with the GUI.

Supposedly, it'll only take 3 more days.

In my experience, it gets slower once blocks get larger.

I have 8GB RAM. How much dbcache should I choose then?

I would set it to 4096. But if the rest of your system needs RAM too, it's going to slow down everything with active swapping.

So is there any risk of damaging hardware/device?

It could be a problem wasn't noticed before until the system was under heavy load.

Hey Loyce. I’m a little confused. Let me ask a direct question: how much of internet data would this require. The 14 days and all downloads? I am really interested in this as I have a capable computer and enough SSD space (external). And it wouldn’t hurt to make some merits (even though I want to do it to learn more).

[LoyceMobile]

how much of data would this require. The 14 days and all downloads?

At least 570 GB.

[oktana]

how much of data would this require. The 14 days and all downloads?

At least 570 GB.

Thank you so much. This is very unfortunate for me because I am not currently using WiFi but my mobile data plan. Which for sure can’t take me that far, or will be too expensive for me. but I would have loved to do this. Even if not for the merit, for the fun of doing it.

[NotATether]

Not sure if this counts as the first day or the second, it's fine either way.
Quoting the "getblockchaininfo" command's results below.

To be clear, the progress posts means days completed.

[tech30338]

day 2 progress

Code:

{
  "chain": "main",
  "blocks": 736551,
  "headers": 824438,
  "bestblockhash": "000000000000000000019c0ffe515d3da6ae35f2734667fe20eb2d3a6533b67c",
  "difficulty": 31251101365711.12,
  "time": 1652667914,
  "mediantime": 1652665073,
  "verificationprogress": 0.808112460088355,
  "initialblockdownload": true,
  "chainwork": "00000000000000000000000000000000000000002ded9907871f40b195ca6e30",
  "size_on_disk": 4926763730,
  "pruned": true,
  "pruneheight": 732973,
  "automatic_pruning": true,
  "prune_target_size": 4999610368,
  "warnings": ""
}

I don't know that this takes time although I try it before and it says like a lot of years ahaha but speed before is slow, but now its faster.

[o_e_l_e_o]

With 450 MB dbcache, this is going to take a long time. If you have the RAM, you should largely increase this (4096 or even 8192, but don't make it more than half your RAM).

The only caveat to this I would mention would be for the users who are not planning on leaving their node running 24/7, but are planning to shut down their computer overnight or at other times. When you shut down Core, the chainstate cache is flushed to disk. If you set a very high dbcache, and you are using older hardware (particularly a HDD instead of a SSD), this can take a not insignificant amount of time (upwards of 20-30 minutes).

[satscraper]

With 450 MB dbcache, this is going to take a long time. If you have the RAM, you should largely increase this (4096 or even 8192, but don't make it more than half your RAM).

I have 8GB RAM. How much dbcache should I choose then? Yup, it's taking a long timeeee...(Running it nonstop for 7-8 hours)

Currently at:

Block: 553667
Progress: 3%
Per hour: 0.50-0.60%
Time left: 6-7 days

New Bitcoin Core users: don't underestimate the hardware demands from Bitcoin Core. Considering chainstate is currently 9.6 GB in size (it grew a lot thanks to the Ordinal spam), I don't think you should attempt to run Bitcoin Core with 8 GB RAM anymore. It's going to be very slow.

So is there any risk of damaging hardware/device? Mine is 4-5 years old. I'm totally running it out of curiosity. It's my first time.  

In general situation  the rule of thumb dbcache=1/4 RAM, i.e. in your case dbcache=2048

And, to speed up a bit the sync I would advocate blocksonly=1 entry in bitcoin.conf file (look for substantiation here). After full initial sync you may remove/comment this  entry.

[DYING_S0UL]

DAY 2 progress:

With 450 MB dbcache, this is going to take a long time. If you have the RAM, you should largely increase this (4096 or even 8192, but don't make it more than half your RAM).

The only caveat to this I would mention would be for the users who are not planning on leaving their node running 24/7, but are planning to shut down their computer overnight or at other times. When you shut down Core, the chainstate cache is flushed to disk. If you set a very high dbcache, and you are using older hardware (particularly a HDD instead of a SSD), this can take a not insignificant amount of time (upwards of 20-30 minutes).

Normally I am taking breaks at daytime after a certain amount of time. Like after 6-12 hours. To cool everything down just in case. But at night, I am running is nonstop without any breaks. I am running it on a 250GB SSD with 4096 dbcache [I have 8GB RAM]. Haven't encountered any issues, for example lag or crash or anything, everything is running smoothly.

The only problem is my internet speed. I tried doing other internet related stuff and everything is running as usual. Not very fast not very slow. But the bitcoin core isn't running with all the bandwidth.

Is there any way to prioritize my bandwidth allocation to bitcoin core?

On average my progress is 0.30-0.40% per hour. If lucky 0.60-0.70% per hour. But now it's only 0.05% per hour. If I close my bitcoin core and start it again, the progress per hour increases for some time.

[NotATether]

Progress:

Code:

Day 2:
tech30338
Ultegra134
DYING_S0UL

Where is everyone else? Guys, don't you want some free merit? All you have to do is run a node and get it synced - no strings attached.

You need to download Bitcoin Core (any version from this decade) and run bitcoind, the bitcoin daemon, for at least 14 days.

I do like encouraging people to run Bitcoin Core, but why start with CLI? I wouldn't start with bitcoind, but use the GUI version (bitcoin-qt) instead. It's much easier to use.

CLI was only because I couldn't think of a way to verify that people were running the GUI properly. But now it seems that screenshots of the GUI downloading progress seems to do the trick, and I have updated the OP accordingly with this information (yesterday).