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.

Bootstrapping versus Adding Nodes

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.

• Option 1: Download Consensus File
• Option 2: Manually Add Nodes

Option 1: Download Consensus File

Download the consensus database from SiaSetup or another source.

The SiaSetup consensus download has been discontinued. You can download the consensus from one of the other Sia community sites below.

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.

Download Links

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.

Files Missing

Uh oh! The consensus download on SiaSetup appears to be missing some files.

Please use one of the other options, and let us know if this error persists for more than 24 hours.

Download from SiaStats.info ZIP

Download a ZIP file of the consensus directly from SiaStats.info (more info).

Download bootstrap.zip

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Download from SiaHub.info GZIP

Download a GZIP file of the consensus directly from SiaHub.info (more info).

Download consensus.db.gz

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Consensus Installation Instructions

1. Download and install Sia if you haven't yet. You can find Sia downloads here.
2. Open the Sia-UI or siad and let it start synchronizing if you haven't yet.
3. Click on the About icon (i) > Open Data Folder, or see this FAQ topic and navigate to the location of Sia's internal data files. Keep this folder open.
4. Close Sia completely - right-click the Sia icon in the system tray and select Quit.
5. Download one of the consensus archives above.
6. Extract 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.
7. Open Sia again and let it process the new consensus. This may take some time.

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.

Option 2: Manually Add Nodes

Add a few nodes to your Sia client to get synchronization going.

The SiaSetup node list has been discontinued. You can add nodes using SiaStats at https://siastats.info/nodes.