Headers-First Synchronization Coming Soon to Bitcoin Core

Headers-First Synchronization Coming Soon to Bitcoin Core

Bitcoin developer Pieter Wuille posted a request for review and testing of a large change that he's been working on for Bitcoin Core: headers-first synchronization. The change has been in the works for about a year and will, hopefully, be released in 0.10 within the next month or two. It affects the way the best chain is discovered, downloaded and verified. This mode of operation has been known for years, but it took a long time to implement. The code works by replacing the single-peer blocks download by a single-peer headers download (which typically takes seconds/minutes) and....


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