On Tue, May 12, 2026 at 11:56:33AM -0400, [email protected] wrote: > > AssumeUTXO is a UX improvement for those interested in running a fully > > validating node. The option to get started in > > a very limited amount of time [...] > It's not at all clear to me how this is a UX improvement. Get started doing > what?
Getting started validating blocks and transactions at the current tip; ie receiving payments. Obtaining the full Bitcoin blockchain currently requires downloading about 600GB of data. At 250Mbps with perfectly well-behaved peers, that's a bit under 7 hours. At the consumer level, bandwidth seems to be the bottleneck, with modern PCs being able to validate the blockchain in about that time. AssumeUTXO significantly reduces the download requirement, with the utxo snapshot at block 935000 being under 9GB. At 100Mbps with perfectly well-behaved peers, that's about 15m to download. Adding in another 8GB-34GB of actual block data to download (assuming that the utxo snapshot people use will be between 4 and 17 weeks out of date) brings that up to 30 minutes to an hour. That is, it's something you can leave running over lunch, rather than overnight. (Sharing these figures, because up to a few weeks ago, my assumption was that a fresh IBD over the network from Australia would take multiple days, and I commonly see people expecting IBD to take a week or more) Cheers, aj -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Bitcoin Development Mailing List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/bitcoindev/agenaZ5mfhghneYo%40erisian.com.au.
