[Pkg-bitcoin-devel] Bug#700887: Bug#700887: ship bootstrap.dat (maybe in a separate package?)

[Dmitry Smirnov]

On Tue, 19 Feb 2013 07:12:05 Antoine Beaupré wrote:
> Bootstrapping bitcoin takes a looong time in Debian. I started the
> client yesterday and after more than 24h, it was still processing blocks
> from november 2012.

With the release of Bitcoin 0.8.0 bootstrapping become much faster so IMHO we 
don't need to do anything. It simply doesn't worth troubles...

> 
> Shipping, or at least documenting the (in)famous bootstrap.dat file
> would go a long way in improving this.
> 
>[...]
>
> The file is 2.5GB, so it may be too big for Debian's archive, but it
> seems to me this could still be useful, as it saves a lot of time.
 
I think it is not a good idea. Peer-to-peer bootstrapping is great.
It doesn't feel right to boost initial bootstrapping by providing data from 
centralised authority even if it is trusted.

Besides Bitcoin network benefit from more clients staying online. Fast 
bootstrapping may not have a big impact for network but certainly won't help 
clients to share already received blocks during initial synchronisation.

-- 
All the best,
 Dmitry Smirnov
 GPG key : 4096R/53968D1B

---

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