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Using bitcoin-cli, how do I check how sync'ed my full node is?

oshirowanen
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1 Answers1

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Calling getblockchaininfo is your best bet. It includes a field called verificationprogress, which is an estimate of how much of the chain you have validated.

Alternatively, compare headers to blocks. If headers is higher, it means that your node has validated the headers for blocks that it has yet to validate. When these numbers match up, it either means you are up to date, or for some reason your node isn't receiving any more block headers. Unfortunately, this doesn't tell you how much further you have to go, since headers may be well behind the rest of the network. You can always compare these values to those provided by an online block explorer. Still, when these numbers match (or are 1 apart), it generally means you are synced.

There are also some good suggestions on this question: How to know if bitcoind synced?

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Jestin
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  • getblockchaininfo shows headers and blocks to be sync'ed with an online block explorer, but it also shows "verificationprogress": 0.9999965647613682,, why is that less than 1 if it's sync'ed? – oshirowanen May 17 '16 at 19:30
  • From documentation for verificationprogress: "Estimate of what percentage of the block chain transactions have been verified so far, starting at 0.0 and increasing to 1.0 for fully verified. May slightly exceed 1.0 when fully synced to account for transactions in the memory pool which have been verified before being included in a block". My guess is that this means your node has seen transactions that are not yet verified. FWIW, I've never seen my full node hit 1.0 on this field. – Jestin May 17 '16 at 20:21
  • Also, this answer is useful to understanding the problem with the definition of "sync'd": http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/9068/how-to-check-if-the-block-chain-is-up-to-date-using-bitcoind-or-json-rpc/10443#10443 – Jestin May 17 '16 at 20:31