Bootstrapping may be faster, but isn't as secure as synchronizing normally.
When Sia is synchronizing, it's downloading the entire history of all the transactions and blocks on the Sia network piece by piece since the beginning, and verifying each piece along the way. This process is resource intensive, especially on traditional hard drives, and can take hours or even days to complete.
Downloading a consensus database file (also known as bootstrapping) makes your Sia client synchronize significantly faster. Because our database is updated daily, your client will only have to synchronize what's new over the last few hours. This can cut hours or days off your synchronization time. Because the database is also zipped and compressed, the file is smaller than normal to download, so you'll download it a little faster.
However, the risk to downloading a consensus database from any source is that you're accepting the transaction history of the Sia network as provided by that source. By downloading SiaSetup's consensus, you're trusting that we haven't made changes to the transaction history in the database file in order to take advantage of your Sia client somehow. This risk is fairly negligible - we would have to know which Sia node was yours, and then somehow interact with you by trying to get you to accept something like a transaction which we didn't have funds to cover or a bogus renting/hosting contract. On top of that, other clients would reject your node because it's consensus wouldn't agree with the rest of the network.
We can't give you much more than our word and the word of the general Sia community as to our reputation and the fact that our consensus database hasn't been tampered with (it hasn't). However, if for any reason you're concerned that our consensus database isn't trustworthy, simply don't download it, and synchronize your Sia client from scratch the way it's designed to be used. Synchronizing from the beginning is the most secure way to use Sia, and to know that you have an accurate history of network transactions that hasn't been tampered with - it's just a very slow process.
You can download the consensus database below and use it in either a new Sia installation, or an installation that has been previously synchronized. A new installation will still take several hours on average to process the new database, but some time will be saved on downloading. If you've been previously synchronized within the last few months, this option is typically fairly fast.
If you want to synchronize Sia from the beginning but it's taking a while to get started, or you don't think data is downloading at the speed your internet connection is capable of due to lack of other nodes, you can add known nodes to your gateway module. Adding more nodes will give Sia more options to download the consensus from. However, synchronization can still take a while even with connections to additional nodes.
You can utilize one or both of these options to get your Sia client synchronized. See below for more information.
Download the consensus database from SiaSetup or another source.
You can download and install a recent consensus database file to speed up synchronization. The details on the consensus database currently available are visible below. This option is best if you need to repair a Sia installation which was previously synchronized, though it will work with a clean installation as well.
This consensus download is intended for Sia v1.5.0+. It will not work with Sia v1.3.5 or lower ("SiaClassic"), ScPrime, or Hyperspace, and probably won't work with Sia versions below v1.4.0. It may not work for Sia versions v1.4.0 to v1.4.11. It is recommended that you download the latest version of Sia before bootstrapping.
Timestamp: 2021-01-16 01:15:01 MST (-0700) Sia Client Version 1.5.4 Git Revision 1e6a56dd3 Build Time 2021-01-11 08:12:25 +0000 Sia Daemon Version 1.5.4 Git Revision 1e6a56dd3 Build Time 2021-01-11 08:12:25 +0000 Synced: Yes Block: 00000000000000026ce4869c8a7431398b926f79307b1ccbf8f124ed76478cd9 Height: 295298 Target: [0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 107 247 252 129 215 29 162 106 207 248 239 170 34 43 178 219 131 43 84 17 130 114 211 19] Difficulty: 5391021963043701494 SHA256: f92f18c66e1aa974cd77d90dbd55069de000328b194863141920502e68cd6d1b Size (Raw): 22.88 GiB Size (Zip): 10.62 GiB
Use an option below to download the consensus bootstrap file. The warnings above about bootstrapping the consensus from any source still apply, and we can't guarantee the safety of using a consensus file from another source. We provide this information only as another resource, and are not affiliated with any of the websites listed here.
Download a ZIP file of the consensus directly from SiaSetup.info.
Downloads: 2,470
Download a ZIP file of the consensus directly from SiaStats.info (more info).
Referrals: 188
Download a GZIP file of the consensus directly from SiaHub.info (more info).
Referrals: 162
The SiaSetup consensus can now be permanently found at https://siasetup.info/consensus.zip for easy inclusion in scripts and other projects. We recommend that when referring others to the consensus download, you refer them to this page so that they may read about the benefits and risks of bootstrapping the consensus themselves before deciding to do so.
siad
and let it start synchronizing if you haven't yet. consensus.db
from the consensus archive you downloaded above and place it in \sia\consensus\
- the consensus folder is found in the folder that you opened earlier through Sia. Replace the existing consensus.db
file with the one from the zip. When opening Sia after installing the downloaded consensus database, you may see this message:
This message may appear after installing the bootstrapped consensus.
This message may display for an hour or more, especially if you've just downloaded and opened Sia for the first time. While the consensus database provided here is nearly up to date, Sia still has to go through and build other things from the database (such as current renter/host status), which can take some time. You may also see resource use on your computer peak, particularly memory utilization. As long as the update message is displayed and no other error message is seen, Sia is working as intended and you simply need to wait and let it finish what it's doing. On a modern system with a solid state drive, this process was measured to take about an hour.
Add a few nodes to your Sia client to get synchronization going.
If your Sia client is having trouble starting to synchronize or staying synchronized, you can manually add nodes to your gateway database. This will allow Sia to connect to the known nodes more quickly, instead of having to wait to find nodes. You can check your gateway list by typing gateway list
into the Terminal of the Sia-UI or using siac
. Consider adding more if you don't have more than one or two listed. By default, Sia tries to maintain a connection with 8 nodes in order to stay synchronized.
These nodes are the nodes that SiaSetup's Sia installation can see, updated nightly. These nodes are not validated or endorsed by SiaSetup, and no guarantee is made in terms of their availability or reputability. Add them at your own risk.
Sia nodes connected to SiaSetup.info as of 2021-01-16 01:15:01 MST (-0700) Version Outbound Address 1.4.11 Yes 148.251.82.174:9981 1.4.8 Yes 78.46.195.95:9981 1.5.3 Yes [2a01:4f8:10b:431d::2]:9981 1.4.1 Yes 95.216.116.164:9981 1.5.3 Yes 75.70.126.170:9981 1.4.11 Yes 50.114.99.136:9981 1.5.4 Yes 71.178.248.177:9981 1.5.1 Yes 3.96.164.7:9981
Pick a node above, ideally one that matches your Sia version. Use the Terminal (>) icon at the top of Sia-UI or siac
and run the command gateway connect 000.000.000.000:9981
, replacing the underlined section with one of the node addresses from our list above. Note that the port number at the end may vary for some nodes. You can repeat this process for each node you want to add.